


Adventures in Suburbia

by Waters



Category: Vicious - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Attempted Murder, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Family Bonding, M/M, More Undead Dogs, Suburbs au, Unresolved Romantic Tension, a multitudes of Chads, but only a little bit. It wouldn't be a vicoius fic without it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-05
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2018-12-24 07:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 23,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12008154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waters/pseuds/Waters
Summary: Victor, Mitch and Sydney need to lay low. One of them is supposed to the be dead, the other an escaped con, and the last, still on the run. So  what better place for a bunch of criminals to go undercover then in the suburbs? Pretty much the last place anyone would think of to look for Victor Vale. But when a cop moves in, a neighbour starts prying into their lives, and several people get attacked, things start to get more complicated. Pretending to be a family, and stirring up Victor's not so dormant need for domesticity,  isn't helping either.Basically a suburbs/undercover AU.





	1. Soccer Moms

**Author's Note:**

> HEY! So I have been like wanting to read more Vicious fanfiction for a long time, but there is none so I wrote something myself! I really hope someone enjoys this! Feel free to talk to me here. If you have anything to say to me about Mitch or Victor, please say it. There is a severe lack of fan content for these two, especially Mitch, and with a sequel coming out in the not so distant future, we have to get the ball rolling again.

 

The police were here. At least some of them. One man and two women in blue uniforms were standing at the edge of the crowd, shouting and waving along with everyone else. Victor stood by the bench, where the injured or otherwise second rate players sat. Sydney wasn’t here. She was on the field, by her opponent’s goal, open, but not offside.

Good.

The soccer moms were as loud as the police, if not louder, screaming at their children to get in position or screaming at the referees or screaming at the opposing teams. Sometimes, they were just screaming. If Victor could have chosen his spot it would not have been by the bench, smack dab in the middle of the shouting, PTA soccer parents. But it was Sydney’s turn to bring snacks, and so Victor stood by the bench, in front of the cooler exploding with cut up watermelon.

Mitch usually came to these things.

Mitch was cool under the gaze of these idiotic suburbanites, and he knew how to sweet talk them. Usually it was by not saying much, smiling politely, and not glaring, something Victor was currently failing at. If that wasn’t enough, Mitch’s hulking form kept everyone else from interacting with him. But Victor was thin and pale and _young_ and these mothers would not stop talking to him.

It would have been almost bearable, if not for the police.

“Which one’s yours?” someone asked. Victor didn’t turn. The man was in plainclothes, standing next to him, smiling. His daughter was on the opposing team, and it had been her turn to bring snacks too. The man’s wife was fretting over the food and the opposing coach rolled her eyes.

This man was a cop. Victor knew by the way he stood. And also by the way he waved to the other cops at the end of the field.

But those three cops didn’t need to be here in uniform. They didn’t need to be here at all, and something suspicious was happening. If Victor had been alone, he might have been able to extract this information, but as of now, his options were limited. Susan, whose daughter actually knew how to play her position as keeper, was inspecting Victor and the cop closely, silently. Helen, whose daughter seemed more interested in rugby or full contact football than soccer, was thankfully preoccupied with something else.

The cop asked Victor again.

Victor didn’t respond. There was no way the man would recognize him. Victor and Mitch and Sydney had moved across country to a tiny suburb that had never heard of EOs or Eli Ever. They’d bought a nice, detached house and established nice, fake identities. It was for the best. In the city, there were too many new people, too many chances that someone would recognize one of them. No one would look for Victor in suburbia.

“Which player, number ten?” the man asked.

“Number 13,” Susan said, ambling her way over. Helen turned suddenly to look at Victor and the cop. The cop looked at Sydney and paused.

“Ugh…”

“She looks more like her other father,” Susan said. Victor opened his mouth to say something. To point out that Mitch wasn’t Sydney’s birth father and, to Victor’s knowledge, had never pretended to be. Sure, Mitch was supposed to be Sydney’s parent, how else would they explain two adult men living with a "13" year old girl, but the two never claimed to be genetically related. But the other implication of Susan's statement was fresher. _Other_ father.

“What?” Victor said.

“Hmmm…” Helen stepped further into the conversation, eyeing Victor up and down and then turning to the cop. “Sydney does look more like Mitch with the,” she waved a hand in front of her face. The man opened and closed his mouth and Victor wondered how uncomfortable this man would have to feel before he went away. "But there's a weird resemblance to Victor, too. With the hair and something about the cheekbones. Doesn't make any sense when you think about it."

“She’s adopted,” the man said, slowly, trying to put the pieces together.

“KEEP MOVING TURNER!” the coach yelled at Sydney who had gotten the ball and was on a one-way dash to the goal. The cop kept squinting at Victor and Victor’s hatred flared, rising in him like a cloud of black smoke.

“Sydney’s pretty good,” Susan said conversationally. Helen chewed her lip, caught between sucking up to Victor and trying to flirt with this new cop whose wife was standing a few feet away. “Did your husband play?”

“My—what?” Victor asked again. Part of him felt like an idiot for not saying something more substantial, but who did he need to impress? The fake mother who probably went home to a loveless marriage and a budding alcohol problem? The good families were all on the other side of the field, sitting down, quietly. Victor didn’t need to impress these wannabe socialites. The point was not to end up in jail, to not give anything about himself away to the police.

“Mitch,” Susan said slowly. “Did he teach her to play? He always comes to these…”

“Mitch doesn’t know how to play sports,” Victor found himself saying. “Except swimming.”

“So who taught Sydney hmmm?” Helen asked. “You’re not exactly the sporting type yourself.” Helen moved to squeeze his bicep, but Victor stepped fully away. “Well, I’m just surprised. You know Beth had tried to teach Michelle to play forward, _endlessly,_ but with no success…” Helen sighed, dreamily, blinking her eyes at the cop.

Seeming to understand that people were talking about her, Beth go up from her folding chair to join the assembled crowd. Victor wished Mitch were here. At least he’d be able to communicate to someone the sheer, excruciating torment of talking to these people.

At first, Victor had thought he could fake it. He’d be fake nice and get into their good social graces and smile and nod. Eli had done it long enough, hadn't he? Then surely Victor could, too. But that confidence had waned been months ago, and it turned out there was only so much useless, petty drama he could take. It turned out that had been three weeks worth. And now he was here.

“Which position does yours play?”  Helen asked the cop. Beth waved at Helen, her braids drifting in the wind. The cop started talking about his daughter and how he’d taught her everything he knew. His daughter wasn’t that good. She was defense, but she couldn’t kick hard enough to clear the ball to the other side of the field. Victor didn’t know much about sports, but he knew this cop was not good at them either.

Beth and Helen and the cop started talking and talking, but Susan just watched. She was watching carefully, her eyes flickering between Victor and the cop and  back again. Her husband had left her, so technically, Susan was the only single mom here, but this was not a flirting gaze. Her face was pressed into a fake, peppy smile that Beth and Helen were seldom seen without. But her hands were tight where they clutched her lanyard and her fake plastic nails were chipping where she had started to pick at them.

“And so I decided to move out here!” the cop finished. He thumped Victor on the back and made some remark about not enough testosterone being at these games. Victor wanted to punch him. Punch him and then explain what an imbecile he was.

Instead, Victor looked at Susan and frowned.

Something was going on here.

#

 

Mitch laughed. It was a low, quiet sound, something that sat heavy in the pit of Victor’s stomach and made his lips twitch upward.

“This could be a serious problem,” Victor said as he filled the pink and blue ceramic bowls with pasta and began placing them on the wooden place mats. Sydney was still washing her hands before dinner, but Mitch, Dol and Victor were in the kitchen, sitting around the mahogany table. The kitchen was nice, well appointed and fresh, the kind of thing straight from a home improvement catalogue. Naturally everyone in the family hated it. Not that they were a real _family._  It didn’t matter.

“Susan McCaffery is not on to us,” Mitch said as he set down the forks.

“She was staring between me and the cop.”

Mitch mixed his pasta with his fork. Victor’s finger went the grains in the wooden table as Dol rolled onto his belly on the floor. Mitch reached for the dog, scratching his belly with ease and Victor’s shoulders tensed without understanding.

“She’s suspicious of something,” Victor continued. “And the officer was too… _present.”_ Victor knew that police officers existed in every town. And he knew that Victor Vale was legally dead and not a suspect anymore. There would be no bulletins out for his arrest. There wouldn’t be any for Mitch either. For one, the prison they had been in still refused to admit that someone had broken out. For anymore, Mitch had gone in and changed his arrest record to be about someone named Mick Turnabout. It was similar enough, he claimed that the guards would probably start to believe that’s who they really had arrested. Meanwhile, Mitchell Turner’s record would be clean and he could use his regular social security number and adopt Sydney (closed adoption all records sealed) in a perfectly legal way.

So, no one was looking for them. No one even _knew_ to look for them except their allies. But Victor couldn’t shake the feeling that anything could go wrong. There were still EOs popping up all over the country and he and Mitch were still compiling their own list of people they would have to visit. It was a bit of a carrot and a stick issue. On the one hand more allies never hurt, on the other Victor was not going to let another Eli Ever jeopardize his safety. 

Sydney came back in the room, sitting at the table primly. Her dyed white-blond hair was held back in a ponytail—the kind she’d never worn before, but did now as part of her ‘disguise.’ She was also wearing a soccer jersey of someone she had never heard of before coming here.

While Sydney was rebranding herself into someone sporty, Mitch had rebranded himself as a gentle, caring father (albeit one that hit the gym very frequently and would terrify his daughter’s potential romantic partners on site). He drove Sydney to soccer practice, he volunteered for school events. He had even volunteered for the upcoming charity bake sale.

Victor was supposed to have rebranded too, but that had gone much less successfully. Right now, he wasn’t quite sure what he was. He wasn’t even twenty years older than Sydney and the parents around the school looked at him with a curious fascination. He was young. Not immature like their own children, but still holding onto the vestige of youthfulness that they all craved. He was supposed to be a travel writer to explain why he might leave town unexpectedly. But that was it. Victor had tried gung-ho neighbour to little success. He’s tried sullen writer too, but the other parents would not give him two seconds alone.

Mitch was supposedly a freelance programmer, which was close enough to the truth at any rate. Whatever he was doing, most of it surprisingly legal, had paid for the little house in suburbia and the off-white picket fence and the flowers that kept un-dying. The flowers were Victor’s idea—to help Sydney practice her powers. Animals were good, but killing and reviving them repeatedly was cruel. But with the flowers,  Syd could bring them back when they died again and again, exploring the feelings it caused in her and the extent of her powers. But somehow having lush undying flowers in the middle of winter only seemed to piss off his neighbours, and make them more curious.

There was no winning. And they had been here so long, that even the very core of what had made them a group was starting to change.

Sydney ate silently. Mitch ate silently. Victor wanted to talk about something, for once, but he didn’t want to betray how much Susan was bothering him. So, he ate silently too. Only Dol, whose loud mouth breathing beat out like a metronome, made any sound at all.

Victor wasn’t sure what he was supposed to feel. Right now, he was angry. Angry at Susan, at the police officer, at the concept of suburbs. This was a good place to lay low, he told himself. But it didn’t stop him hating it. It didn’t stop the feeling that something was slowly killing him.

Across the table Mitch smiled at him, and Victor smiled back, reflectively. It was obvious what Mitch was trying to say: don’t worry about it. But Victor was worrying about. He was worrying about how Mitch smiling produced such an automatic reaction in him.

He was worried that the silence at the table was digging into them, eroding what they really were. He was worried they would get complacent, or that they would turn into Helen and her husband, who hated each other and only stayed together because of their daughter Tiffany.

Above all Victor was worried that here was where he was going to spend the rest of his life, not flying or soaring, but driving to soccer practice and sitting at home, washing dishes, and never getting his feet off the ground.

 

#

 

Victor waited by the car. A minivan. No one pulled over minivans. It was a good car for a disguise. Victor hated it. He hated it so intensely it surprised him sometimes. Like the minivan was a symbol of everything that was wrong with here. And Victor had known that before coming here, he had known he wouldn’t like it. Ah, hubris.

Now Victor waited by the car and focused on what he’d learned in prison. Coiling his hatred into a ball, into determination. Waiting. Sydney had tryouts for the advanced soccer team today. The parking lot was next to the soccer field and Victor looked onto the grass to see all the girls desperate to make the cut.

Victor waited.

A white Mercedes Benz pulled up beside him in the parking lot and Victor knew who it was instantly.

“Hello,” Susan said. She was smiling. Her daughter would be at the tryouts too, of course. Most of the parents were waiting in the front of the school by the “Kiss and Ride” but Victor had parked in the parking lot to avoid them.

Of course, Susan would be here.

“Look, I know that you’re a writer, and writers tend toward the pretentious, sullen type, but I’m here as favour to you, actually.” Susan locked her car and stepped over to Victor, not touching the minivan, but still leaning back toward it. Victor wanted to scoff. Instead, with remarkable restraint, he raised an eyebrow. “Helen nominated you for the PTA.”

Victor whipped around.

“I know. I figured you wouldn’t like it. But you know Helen.” Susan shrugged. “It won’t stick since Sydney’s in grade eight and she’ll be off to high school in a couple months, but you’ll have to attend the lead up nomination meetings. The first one is this week. When we decide what to bring to the bake sale.”

Mitch had mentioned the bake sale. Victor sighed. He did not want to deal with Helen.

It wasn’t that all of the parents at this school were horrible. The issue was the ones that were decent did not join the PTA and were not accosting Victor in supermarkets to talk about how to test the firmness of melons.

“Thank you for the warning,” Victor said. If he was going to find out what Susan suspected, he would have to seem nice, or at least, not overtly hostile.

Susan waved her hand as if it was nothing. She was not much older than he was. She was thirty-five, and the girl, Jack, was her oldest. Susan had apparently gotten pregnant right out of university.

“You know, Jack mentioned to me that Sydney might want to come to the same summer camp, it’s a soccer boot camp. You can talk to her about it and I can give you the details.” Susan fished out her phone, but Victor’s eyes just flickered to the field where the prospective soccer team was still running drills.

“Why would you talk to me?”

Susan’s hand paused on her phone. “What do you mean?”

“Why wouldn’t you talk to Mitch? Besides, if Sydney wanted to go, she would have mentioned it.”

“All right,” Susan said, but there was an edge of steel to her voice.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

Victor remained unconvinced.

“No, I get it. Mitch takes her to soccer practice and comes to parent teacher conferences, and takes care of her summer camp and her school work and drives her to hang out her friends.  Mitch does everything.” There was a bitterness to her voice that suggested she was taking this very personally. Victor didn’t have to justify himself to her. He didn’t have to talk about the even splitting of house chores or how he had to do most of the grunt work because Victor couldn’t really cook and Mitch could. They even spilt their EO research evenly. But even if they split everything with the household, Mitch did do most of the taking care of Sydney.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your concern,” Victor said again. The coach on the field blew her whistle and the girls excitedly gathered around. This would be the point where the coach made some statement about all of them being good and other nonsense and then she’d tell them when she’d post the list of who made the team.

Susan was glaring at him, but Victor focused on the field. And then something sunk in his gut as he recognized one of the girls. She was smiling and laughing and Victor had seen her before at the game where Sydney had to bring snacks.

It was the cop’s daughter.

Susan seemed to recognize her too, and her hands balled into fists, her posture rigid. It didn’t matter what Mitch said, Susan was thinking about something. She knew _something._

Victor unlocked the van and climbed in, eyes focused ahead. Susan didn’t move, her body facing the field, her legs bent, like she was standing at attention.

Something was very wrong here. And Victor was going to find out what it was.

 

#

 

Cindy Tenenboym hated conspiracy theorists. Sure, some seemed harmless, like the ones about faked moon landing, but once someone started claiming Jews were lizard people controlling everything behind the scenes—fuck no.

Her roommate was the only such theorist she tolerated and that was because Hanan didn’t believe in Martians or ghosts or the fucking Illuminati. She believed in EOs. She believed so emphatically, and did so much research that even Cindy was starting to question whether or not they were real. And Hanan was always kvetching. She was so _close,_ so unbelievably _close_ to a real breakthrough.

So, at first, Cindy had thought that maybe there was something behind these EOs. Not in the way that Hanan thought, but maybe in some capacity.

And then Hanan disappeared.

And then Cindy was walking home when white van jumped the curb and hit her.

Cindy lay there, struggling to breathe, struggling to remember what Hanan had said about almost dying and EOs. She was just outside their apartment, the window a few floors from her head. But everything already seemed so far away.

Her head was woozy, her thoughts swimming and she was dying and dying and it seemed like there were police lights on. Had the police come here so soon? Or maybe these people who had hit her were the police. Maybe Hanan had known to much and now so did Cindy.

If Cindy could just get to her room she could see it all, pinned to Hanan’s corkboard. If Cindy could just fly up and get to her room. But her limbs would not obey her and her vision was swirling around in circles. Her lungs were two dimensional, impossible to expand open.

Fight it. She remembered.

And so, she fought it. Maybe Hanan had been right after all, maybe that was why she disappeared, maybe that’s why these men had jumped the curb for her.

All Cindy needed to do was get up to her room.

Up.

Get up.

Up.

White and blue and red lights flashed.

“What the fuck Chad! What the _fuck_!”

Get up.

Up.


	2. Grounded

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The PTA race gets intense. And then there's Chad.

The gymnasium of folding chairs was full. Helen and Beth and three other mothers and one father were sitting at a long collapsible table, mounted on a wooden box like a platform, at the front of the gym. Helen clicked her fuzzy ended pen and began writing in a mauve notebook. Victor walked carefully into the gym and parted the crowd around him.

Susan had said that he was nominated for the new PTA position (which didn’t make sense because he wasn’t actually a parent) and that he had to be here, so Mitch had stayed at home to do some data mining of police databases. Sydney had wanted to come with Victor, possibly just to see him crash and burn, but more likely because she was bored. Victor had entertained the idea, but Mitch shot it down, telling Sydney to take Dol on a walk.

So now Victor was here alone. And there were no seats. Except when Susan spotted him she removed her bag from the chair beside her. Victor sighed under his breath and went to join her.

The other parents were chatting, sound filling the large room, bouncing of walls again and again. Helen picked up her miniature gavel like she was going to start the meeting when the cop and his wife walked into the room.

Victor had never seen them before the game. Not at school, not at any other soccer games, and sure, Victor wasn’t around that often, but Helen had acted like the cop was _new,_ and Helen knew everyone. Now, suddenly, Victor was seeing him everywhere. The cop and his wife stood at the back of room and Helen banged her gavel. Beginning the meeting.

Victor turned to Susan, her hand curled in a vice grip on her purse. She’d spotted the cop too.

“Welcome! Our first order of business is to discuss the new PTA nominees!” There was an oohing sound through select members of the audience and an eye rolling sound from Victor and several others. Helen pointed to whiteboard to her left, covered with a damask silk sheet. She pulled the sheet away with a flourish and Victor read the names of the nominees.

Liz Jones

Cheryl Burley

Katherine Bailey

Victor Turner

Linda Shaw

Chad Dunker

Victor paused for a moment and refocused again on the list. _Victor Turner._ For one wild second, Victor wondered how anyone could think that Mitch and he were brothers. And then Victor got it. He understood the moms’ comments. The “other father” comment. Asking after Victor’s husband. He understood why Susan, recent divorcee, was miffed that Victor stuck Mitch will all the child rearing responsibilities. Gears locked in Victor’s mind and then, he zoomed back into the conversation.

“And lastly, we have Chad Dunker! Recently moved from our neighbouring township, East Warswick!”

The cop waved and smiled and Victor’s stomach bottomed out. Beside him, Susan leaned over, her mouth covered daintily by her hand.

“You missed the last meeting, but Chad said he’s running on a platform to increase safety and motivation,” Susan scoffed. Victor’s mind was whirring with possibilities and plans and he dialed up the pain on _Chad_ enough for him to be visibly uncomfortable. “He was talking about installing metal detectors and police patrols and getting those pretentious self-help speakers from out of town, the _Vales,_ those ones who are always touring? They just published that book about their son dying and how to get over the loss of a loved one, but fancy that, because no one even knew they had a son…” Susan kept talking.

On stage Helen and Liz Applebaum and Blythe Smith talked about the strong points of each of the candidates.

Victor knew very little about parenting. Somehow, he had jumped straight from finishing college (without honours as his thesis was never finished, but as his term work was, he still had a bachelor's) to being a middle-aged parent with a teenage daughter. There was no in-between. Still there were two facts he knew about parenting.

The first was that trying really hard not to screw up your kid, and actively trying to care about them was more than most parents did, if they were honest.

The second thing he knew was that fathers got more credit for doing the bare minimum amount of work than mothers. That was just classic sexism. But it was true. A dad takes his son to the doctor, and is lauded a hero. A mother who does so better not fall behind on work or household chores!

Which meant that Liz and Cheryl and Linda, who were all good mothers, would immediately lose to Chad, who, by all appearances, was not doing much other than showing up. And Chad was going to bring the Vales here. Victor’s parents. Who would recognize their dead son even if he had longer hair and was apparently married with children instead of ten feet under in a grave three states away.

“This is bad,” Victor said, under his breath. Susan hummed in agreement. “We should help Linda win.” Linda was not much better than Liz, or Liz, or Helen or Cheryl or Blythe but she was certainly _smarter_ than they were. She might actually be helpful to the PTA even if she was just as catty as the others.

“Linda’s not going to win,” Susan said gravely as Helen called for a round of applause for the nominees. Victor turned to her with new eyes and new curiosity. Susan met his gaze, head on. It was the gaze of a single mother who did the job of two parents, and who did it well. It was the face of a woman who had seen mediocre men beat overqualified women her whole life and knew what would happen now.

“You have to win Victor,” she said. And Victor knew, as much as he hated it, that she was right.

 

#

 

“You’re running for the PTA?” Sydney asked with a mouthful of coconut rice. Victor had at once the urge to chide her for talking with her mouth full, and also the uncanny feelings that he was falling too deep into his role here.

“If we just packed up everything and moved it would be suspicious. And Chad is here permanently, so we can’t just take a fake vacation to avoid him.” Victor ate his own rice as Mitch looked down at his food, thoughtfully. He had been wearing a lot of sweaters recently and letting his hair grow long enough for him to tie it into a bun. He looked like a dad. Perhaps, not the lazy, underachieving fathers of this neighbourhood, or the overworked, suited, cheating spouses of the street next over, but Mitch looked softer now. He looked like a man who would provide for his daughter.

And Sydney looked like that perfect daughter, with good grades, a spot on the sports team and a can-do attitude. Victor didn’t know what he looked like.  Probably like the asshole husband that Mitch had settled for. Victor had never imagined himself in suburbia, or married, but he had always known, if either of those things were to happen, he was not going to be someone that his spouse _settled_ for.

“I can get closer to Jack, so we can see why Susan wants to help you,” Sydney offered. Mitch shook his head.

“I might know why,” Mitch said. Victor and Sydney waited for him to continue. “Susan was away on business for years. No one knew where. But when she came back her husband immediately left and Susan started freelancing instead of returning to her old job. Given her unease towards the police I did some digging.” Mitch paused to take a drink of water and Victor wondered if Mitch had settled for him. Victor was a one trick pony, and while he was certainly vengeful and determined, Mitch had real world skills Victor never had. Mitch could have probably pursued graduate work. He could have gotten his own children.

“She’s been to jail,” Victor guessed and Mitch nodded.

“Tax evasion. She invested a lot in drug companies partnering with the local university but it was all off the book.”

“So at least we can trust her motives.” Sydney said, spitting some rice on the table. Mitch muttered something about manners and Victor knew he had to think of some permanent solution to this. He had to find them a way out of this town and into somewhere else.

It was Mitch’s turn to wash the dishes but Victor did so anyway, thinking carefully. It would be easy to rig the election, since the ballets were paper and kept in the school, where none of the cameras recorded at night.

First would be to make people feel uncomfortable around Chad. Then run a campaign of some kind that was moderately successful. Successful enough that if he did win, no one would question it. And then he would break into the school and switch the ballots. It was simple.

But there was a more pressing issue.

Nothing big had happened since Eli’s arrest. The papers were still talking about it, months later, and Mitch had turned up no leads.

But now the police were snooping around. If he left, people might connect the two, not immediately, but eventually. That was why they had been here for months already, waiting for a bigger news story than a serial killer slash supervillain. But waiting was useless, some big news event wasn’t just going to turn up out of nowhere. If Victor wanted out of this town he would need people’s minds to be focused on something new. Something bigger than EOs. And he would have to do it soon before he got too caught up in who’s turn it was to do the dishes or how he couldn’t sleep well without listening to the sound of Mitch’s breathing in the bunk above him.

But Victor had a plan.

And it was time to put it into action.

 


	3. Rings and Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor starts to plan his escape. But some things work too well.

 

Victor looked down at the glass encasement. Glittering in front of him were two gold bands. He had meant to simply waste time in the jewelry store until Professor Silva came to the mall for lunch, but now Victor was pausing.

Two thoughts warred in his head and the battle sat uneasily in Victor’s stomach.

If Victor and Mitch were married, shouldn’t they wear rings? Wouldn’t the rings help to add to their cover? Two married men with their child was not what authorities were looking for. It would be a good idea. In fact, the very image of it settled pleasantly in Victor’s core.

But Victor and Mitch weren’t really married.

And the idea that they were, the idea that being married would look a lot like what they had already been doing (picking up the kid from soccer practice, coordinating who was cooking, doing the laundry together) was starting to make Victor think that maybe he wouldn’t mind being married to Mitch. They had spent the last six years together.  It was the longest positive relationship Victor had ever had. It would be easy to marry Mitch.

In fact, it was so easy, it was alarming. Mitch was quiet, and Victor liked quiet, but it also meant there was no way of knowing if Mitch would respond positively to this idea. And there was Sydney. Victor was responsible for her. He had to be. And it was clear that Mitch loved doting on her. But how did Syd feel? Would talking to Mitch,  _dating_ Mitch ruin whatever dynamic they had? What about if Victor had to leave? If people came looking for him? Every time he drew Syd and Mitch closer to him, he drew them closer to danger, closer to the ledge of vengeance and Stell Victor's own sharp-edged actions. Maybe, even if Mitch did like Victor, he had stayed away for that reason. Maybe Mitch had kept that space there on purpose. Victor bit the inside of his lip, teeth slicing down too hard. Maybe Victor was the only one who wondered what it would be like for them to be family. But maybe not. And anyway, this was not something Victor had a lot of time to think about because now it was 12:00 and soon professor Silva would take her lunch.

Victor paid for the rings and left the store without thinking about it. He sat down at professor Silva’s favourite table in the food court just as she entered. She picked a chain store, ordered her sandwich, and turned to find Victor, lightly pursuing a novel in her favourite seat.

So, she sat beside him, at the next table over, where she could clearly see what he was reading.

Professor Silva was a biochemistry professor at the university close by, the one Victor tried his hardest not to think about. Her husband was a lesser known, psychology professor who studied pain management and who Victor had offered his services as a volunteer to.

The husband and wife couple were teaming up. Silva had a new drug that could, possibly, help people build a tolerance to pain without the side effects or the need for continual use of pain killers. It was going to be big. Susan had invested a lot of money in the drug company, before jail. Now the leader was George something. McMillian. McCartney. McLafferty. Some rich guy who’d married some woman twenty years too young. Something like that. Either way he had a lot of money backing this project. And Silva’s husband, Barkhouse, wanted to measure the psychological effects of pain and tolerance and how this was going to work.

And that was where Victor came in.

Silva was still looking at the book Victor was reading.

“That’s one of my favourites,” she said. Victor smiled, his wedding ring glinting nonthreateningly in the food court light.

“Really? I couldn’t find anyone else who liked it.”

Silva grinned, the pain of her hand cramping lessening, the throb from her high heel shoes evaporating.

And this was just the beginning.

 

#

 

Victor got home, parked in his driveway, opened his door, and came face to face with Susan.

Victor was holding the bag he’d bought from the jewelry store and her eyes darted to it immediately.

His first thought was _get out of my house,_ but when he looked behind him, he saw Mitch and Sydney and Susan’s daughter Jack were sitting in the living room, notepads in hands.

“We’re brainstorming,” Jack said, as if that made some kind of sense.

“We texted you,” Sydney said. Mitch looked down his fake reading glasses at Victor.

“This is about the PTA.”

“You have to run,” Sydney said and Jack muttered in agreement.

“We can’t have Chad on the board,” Susan said with a low undercurrent. Before today his suburban life had been dull, boring, no challenges, and here was a perfect opportunity to manipulate events. He would rig the election, sure, and win, but the true challenge was running Chad out of town. It was making people feel uncomfortable when he walked into the room, and more relaxed, less in pain whenever Victor was there. But it was still a mundane goal. A manipulation so minor as to be almost trivial.

At least soon there would be the miracle results of Silva’s study. Eventually, the results would be failed to be replicated, and people would look at who was administering the drugs and of course it was her husband and of course he had volunteers, and one of them was Chad, Chad who had recently skipped town, and of course Barkhouse might be disgraced, but that was all years and years away.

Right now, this place needed a miracle drug. Right now Victor had to sew the seeds and make the easy jumps so when something big came, he was prepared. He had to wait.

“What’s my platform then?” Victor asked, smiling. Susan giggled nervously, but Victor was looking at Mitch, and beneath that expression of placid curiosity, Mitch was looking at the bag and looking at Victor’s smile and he was calculating. He was putting the pieces together. Victor hadn’t told Mitch the full extent of his plan. Not until he was sure it would work. Not until he offered Mitch the chance to…to do…not until Victor was sure that Mitch wanted to be here.

“I was thinking you run on a kind of return to nature approach, since you’re a travel writer,” Jack offered. Sydney let her friend talk on about this, but the ‘Turners’ were all having a conversation among themselves.

“What we need is a quiet approach,” Mitch was saying. “Subtle.”

“I think we should go more on the offensive,” Sydney said. “Who knows when or how Chad’s going to…campaign, we should strike first, so to speak.”

Susan was speaking, but Victor ignored her to sit on the couch between Mitch and Sydney.

“Subtly is good. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try offensive, though perhaps we should hold back until we have a better plan of what I’d actually do once I’m elected,” Victor said. Sydney furrowed her brow, perhaps not following, but Mitch knew. Victor handed him the bag from the store. “I have a few ideas though.”

“I’m sure you do,” Mitch said, smiling, ostensibly at Victor, but more for Susan’s sake. He patted Victor on the knee and Susan opened her mouth to say something and Mitch turned to her, listening carefully. Victor did not turn.

He could feel Mitch’s hand on his knee and was suddenly aware how old they were. Victor was thirty-two. He was just past thirty and he had never seriously dated anyone. In high school, he had found the experience cheap, fake, and he had taken some joy that it displeased his parents that he didn’t have a girlfriend.

In college, his experiences had been more varied. He had meet Eli and Angie and he burned with the intensity, with the idea that he should be the most important thing to either of them. It wasn’t _necessarily_ romantic, though a large part of it had been. But more than that he simply wanted someone to like him most. He had wanted someone to _want him_ even if it wasn’t sexual.

There had been dates. Girls mostly. And then he had wondered if he might like men. And then he had been on one date and then Angie and Eli got together and Victor had been consumed with nothing else. And then jail. And now he was here and Mitch was smiling at him, rubbing his palm in a circle on Victor’s knee that was supposed to communicate something, but Victor couldn’t think about it.

He was not experienced. He’d had one second date. Maybe six dates in total. He was not experienced. He did not know how this worked. He was an adult. He could have had a child by this point.  In some ways, he did have a child.

“You all right, there?” Mitch asked. “You seem tired.”

And that was the opening. Victor yawned.

“Just a long day traveling around. Speaking of which, Susan, I appreciate you help, but I think it’s time I just relaxed with my family.”

“Of course, of course.”

Victor smiled.

Mitch did not remove his hand until he stood up to usher Susan out he door. Susan pushed Jack out ahead of her and bent low to whisper something to Mitch, just quiet enough that Victor could still hear.

“Listen, one last thing," Susan said. "You know I would never gossip about it, and Jack is a good girl, but Liz was staying to Amanda that when her daughter Becky and Sydney were having a sleepover well—there’s rumours that your marriage is on the rocks…” Susan dropped her voice even lower and Victor stood up to hear better as Sydney lounged on the couch practicing her disinterested face.

“You see,” Susan said. “Becky was upstairs, looking for the washroom and apparently she seemed to be under the impression that you two sleep in two separate rooms.” Susan’s eye brows shot up and Victor laughed.

“That’s just my writing room,” Victor waved his hand airily. “I’m a writer, and you think I’m going to keep my husband up at night typing away in our bedroom, please.”

Susan deflated. “It’s just what I heard.”

“Yes, yes.” Victor ushered her out the door and all but slammed it after her.

 

#

 

Victor was brushing his teeth in the bathroom mirror when Mitch came in. Sydney was in bed and Dol was camped outside her door. For a moment no one said anything.

“Speaking of bedrooms, you’re not sleeping,” Mitch said.

Victor spat out the tooth paste. “Excuse me.”

“You haven’t been sleeping well, you keep waking me up when you move around your room.” Victor opened his mouth to respond when he caught sight of Mitch wearing the wedding ring he’d bought. Victor swallowed. He was not naïve enough to pretend he didn't like the idea of being married. But Victor liked the idea of being important to people. He liked the idea of someone being committed to him, and really loving him and Victor did not have the skills or experience or  _personality_ necessary to make a marriage work.

“When we were on the run you slept fitfully too,” Victor said.

“We’re not on the run anymore. And I did still _sleep._ You slept too. And you slept in prison.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“In prison, you were sort of…safe I guess. And on the run you aren’t. And now, for the first time in almost ten years, you are sleeping in a room by yourself—”

“I was in solitary first for five years.”

“So, sleeping alone reminds you of solitary?”

“What are you questioning, Mitch?” There was an edge to his voice that Victor didn’t like. It was the kind of edge he gave to someone too stupid to follow the conversation. Except if anything, Mitch was the smart one here. “I’m sorry,” Victor amended. “I’ll try to be quieter if I wake up.”

“Victor, do you think I didn’t know from the beginning that people thought we were married? And that you didn’t know? And suddenly, now you’re buying wedding rings. I thought this meant it was all right to talk about…things…” Mitch trailed off, the words not sitting right in his mouth. “When we were on the road, you always slept better when you could hear someone breathing in the next room. You might want to get a white noise machine.”

This was not the fullest thing that Mitch wanted to say, Victor was sure. Besides, Victor didn’t want a white noise machine. He wanted to be able to hear what was happening. He had slept better hearing someone breathe in the next room. It reminded him he still had someone on his side. It reminded him he wasn’t alone without Eli. In some ways, it had dulled the acid pain of revenge eating at him.

“It’s just the bed is too big,” Victor said. “Even in college I haven’t slept in a bed that big since I was a child since—” since he had been alone in a big house in a big bed. In college, his tiny room and tiny bed, while cramped, had made him feel closed in, secure, like there was no where someone could sneak up on him. When he was little the wide-open space had set his teeth on edge.

“I’m sorry,” Victor said again and wiped the remnants of tooth paste from his face. He was sorry for making Mitch uncomfortable, for snapping, for making it seem like Mitch had to tip-toe around him. Victor's old need to hurt, to dial up the pain around him until everything broke, ebbed and flowed, and it was at it's lowest when Victor was with Mitch and Sydney. It was useless to pretend he didn't care about them. Useless to pretend that being around them didn't dull his edges in a way that terrified and enticed him at once. He didn't want to hurt them.

“You should sleep in the master bedroom,” Mitch said. “On the chaise, it’s small, comfortable, long.” And Victor would be able to hear Mitch breathing. But that went unsaid.

“I don’t like it here,” Victor muttered. His heart clenching, the electric sense of his gift, flaring with awareness. “I _hate_ it here. I don’t want to…” what? He didn’t want to become his parents? How cliché—how pedestrian. And wasn’t he past these petty concerns by now?

Victor took a deep breath. He was acting like he had just turned twenty. Mitch and Victor were both adults.

“That’s a good idea,” Victor said. There was a pause in the conversation, where Mitch closed the bathroom door. And they were alone with the porcelain and translucent blue backsplash.

“What’s going on?” Mitch asked.

“It reminds me of my childhood.” It was the truth, but not all of it. The truth was harder. The truth was a vicious need to hurt and a vicious need to keep close tearing at each other.

“Okay. What’s with the rings? Where were you today?”

“I was visiting a professor, setting up a distraction. We need to leave this place soon, Mitch. I hate it here. Sydney hates it here, hates pretending to be cheerful and peppy and I _know_ she feels like she would be burdening us if she doesn’t play her part. Even _you_ hate it here.”

Mitch said nothing.

“Look, I’m setting up a remarkable drug discovery, and once it gets in the news, then we’ll leave. We’ll find a city or some place to live and we’ll pick a fake life we like better.”

Victor’s eyes fell to the gold ring on Mitch’s finger.

“Look…I appreciate that you’re here, but…”

“You don’t get it.” Understanding blossomed in Mitch’s eyes. “Vic, I’m not staying here because I don’t have anywhere else to go, or because I’m nice. You, me, Syd, we’ll all any of us have got.”

“I know. Friends are hard to find, and I would be lost without you.” Victor almost wanted Mitch to correct him, to say that they were family. Mitch did not. He went back to the master bedroom, and when Victor was finished, he went too.

And for once Victor slept soundly.

 

#

 

Professor Silva’s drug trails had been going spectacularly. Normally, Terrence would have appreciated being attached to such a big name. If he got this much recognition as a PhD student, he’d have his pick of post-doc positions and then his pick of professorships, hopefully.

Except now someone was screaming at him.

“I’m a student here!” Terrence showed his key fob and dug around for his student ID but the man at the door was not having it and the man behind him was shouting. He was shouting that Silva’s drug was a scam, and the institution of university was corrupt.

If Terrence had been white, the security officer would have let him into the lab building by now. If Terrence had been athletic, he could have run to his tiny apartment, but the lab building was the only place that he could get into and that was well lit enough for him to escape this shouting guy who had been hounding him for a block.

At least standing here, the screaming man couldn’t just stab him, right? Not with witnesses. But what if someone called the police. Oh god.

“C'mon, can't you let me in!” Terrence tapped his fob to the reader, which glowed green, and he moved to open the door, but the security man blocked him. “C’mon man! You see this.” Terrence tried to nod his head at the shouting lunatic.

“Look, I know you go to this university and I know you have a fob that gets into he building, but I don’t know if you actually work in this building. I need to see your employee ID.”

“ _Seriously._ ”

Terrence shivered in the cold and drew his coat closer to him. The shouting man was gesturing, swearing that Terrence and all his fellow scientists would burn in hell. He had a monogrammed jacket, with one patch about psychology and the initial D glaring at Terrence in a weird font.

For a moment, Terrence considered calling his mom and in the meantime just hanging around the security guard, but when he turned around the shouting man was gone.

And then Terrence felt something hot and slick on his back.

_No._

The air was sucked out of him and Terrence fell to the ground. The security guard wrested the man away.

_Please don’t call the police._

_Call my mother. Call my office mate._

Terrence was choking on blood and everything was going black and all Terrence could think about was wanting to call for help. All he could think about was just wanting to reach someone. Wanting to reach into their mind and show them what was happening, show them what they needed to do.

Call an ambulance, don’t say it was a stabbing yet, so the police wouldn’t arrive until he was already at the hospital. Then call his supervisor because it wouldn’t look good to the press if she didn’t pay for her students’ medical expenses when he got fucking stabbed working on _her_ project.

Terrence wanted them to see.

_Just let them see. Just let them see._

And then everything went black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, I noticed there were no comments at the end of this fic so far, and I just wanted to say to feel free to leave comments. Literally. If you have an issue? comment. It's good? comment. If you have a lot to say, do it. If you have little to say, do it to. Even if you just comment "A+" or "my cat is really fluffy" I will take it. Sometimes it helps to know real people are reading this, and it's not shot into the void, you know?
> 
> Anyway! Hopefully everyone in this tiny fandom is enjoying the fic so far, and hopefully they will continue to enjoy it.


	4. Meddling Twenty-Somethings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Terrence Lives, Cindy's back, and Victor struggles with ideas about what the future holds in store

There were strange people in his room.

Terrence couldn’t breathe on his own yet and the tube sticking down his throat was irritating and uncomfortable, but he was _alive._ Somehow his mother had realized he was in trouble and called an ambulance and met him at the hospital and Terrence was alive. But he couldn’t speak.

The strangers in his room were talking and it wasn’t as if Terrence could respond yet so he kept his eyes closed and listened.

“Why didn’t you teach me Slovenian?” a young girl asked.  Terrence cracked one eye open carefully. The man standing there was white, with long blonde hair and his arms crossed against his cardigan like he’d rather be wearing anything else. The girl was blonde too, but not white. At least not entirely. Still, she looked the man, probably her father.

“I don’t actually know Slovenian.”

There was a pause, and then the girl started, carefully. “I know. But you’re learning...”

“Not exactly. I’m never supposed to have known how to speak Slovenian well. My parents left Slovenia when I was young.”

“So, why didn't you teach me what you knew?” Her voice was small, but with an edge. As if she was trying to be defiant, as if she thought she _should_ be defiant, but was still looking for approval.

“Do you want to learn Slovenian?”

“If it would that help.”

Terrence could not believe the inanity of this conversation. He just wanted them to _stop._ And then, suddenly, mercifully, they were silent and a coldness spread over him, starting in his core and expanding outward.

“You’re awake,” the man said and Terrence opened his eyes. “I was hoping to speak with you.”

Terrence was tempted to roll his eyes, but the man simply pulled out a legal pad and pen, holding them out for Terrence to take.

“We were…” the girl trailed off. She couldn’t even be in high school yet and it was clear some part of her was still trying to impress her father. Definitely not any teenager he knew. “We were only wondering if there was anything we could do to help. My dad's a private detective, and we--he's been hired to investigate the drug trail you're working on." Her father smiled at her, placing a hand on her shoulder and leaving it there like he wasn't sure what else to do with it.

"I can't imagine that my investigations have been what set off this--incident. But I thought, at any rate, I should offer my assistance." The man paused. “And if there’s anything you know about the attack or drug trial that could be illuminating, I can personally see to it that the matter is investigated fairly,” the man continued. “We are happy to help. I feel responsible, and though I can’t imagine how my actions might have tipped anyone off it’s the only explanation.”

Terrence tapped the pen on the legal pad thinking.

“I know you have no reason to trust us,” the man continued, placing his hand on the bar by Terrence’s hospital bed, but not touching him. At once Terrence started to relax, discomfort fading. He couldn’t pinpoint why, but he was feeling more at ease. “But I left a card—” the man inclined his head to a get well soon card placed beside all the ones his family had given him. His family had been visiting nonstop, leaving cards, bringing food, worrying, making sure he was all right. But it was the middle of a work da, and Terrence’s condition was steadily improving, so for now, he was blessedly alone.

 _Do you think there’ll be more attacks_ Terrence wrote down. The man read it, his face implacable.

“God, I hope not. But don’t worry, if there are, we’ll take care of it.”

Terrence wasn’t so sure. But the man nodded and the girl looked serious too as if each of them had made some kind of vow to protect his life.

Terrence was tempted to ask what the fuck was going on. Instead he asked them to leave.

But as they were walking out he door, Terrence paused. _Wait_ he thought and the man stilled.

Could he read Terrence thoughts?

“I’m not reading anything, your projecting.”

Terrence’s monitor started to beep out of rhythm and soon a nurse was rushing in fretting over him as the private detective and his daughter vanished from sight.

 

#

 

 

When Victor got home from the hospital, Mitch was in the basement. Sydney followed Victor down, both of them waiting on the steps watching Mitch lift weights. Sydney was eying the equipment like she wanted Mitch to teach her, but wasn’t sure she actually wanted to lift weights.

Victor was eying Mitch.

Mitch was sweating, muscles moving, and it had taken Victor a long time in his life to figure out if he was attracted to men. The sweating bulging muscles weren’t really doing anything. But the fact that Mitch was still wearing the wedding ring was twisting Victor’s stomach. It was like something soft and fluffy was growing inside him, and it was just getting worse the more he thought about.

Mitch looked up from his set, catching sight of them, and grinned at Sydney, motioning her to come over and see what he was doing. It was such an open, honest, gesture and for once the idea that Victor wasn’t the most important person in someone’s life didn’t sit uneasily within him. He was okay with being second place to Sydney.

Victor swallowed.

He didn’t feel like this often. He hadn’t felt this soft about it ever. Even with Angie and Eli his feelings had been tinted with inadequacy, his feelings that he wasn’t good enough. But now he was here, with Mitch who cared about him, who loved Sydney, who lifted weights and had been finding ways to suggest they both take the bed instead of Victor sleeping on the chaise.

It had only been a few weeks since Victor figured out they were supposed to be married, but they had been the most excruciating weeks.

Yesterday he had woken up to the sleep warm press of Mitch’s foot on the back of his bare calf. Victor had stayed there for minutes, heart pounding in his chest as sunlight streamed through the windows in bright, comfortably hot beams. Mitch mumbled something incoherent in his sleep, and when Victor finally turned around, coming face to face with a man he had seen sleep thousands of times, he paused. In prison, Mitch’s face was scrunched in his sleep. His jaw clenched, brow tense. Now, he dug his nose into the goose down pillow, his hair shining and loose around him. He wasn’t smiling, but the planes of his face were open, vulnerable, and Victor had the urge to trace a finger down his skin to feel the smoothness.

Mitch was—Mitch was so many things that Victor had never really thought about before. In prison, Mitch was smart, and funny, and reliable, and Victor had found himself a friend that he could count on and like. But Mitch was caring in a way Victor had never considered, had never experienced from anyone first hand. He cared about Sydney so much, and seemed to believe that Victor did to. Mitch was worried for her in a way that no one had ever worried about Mitch. He was gentle with her in a way that neither of them knew. Victor had been afraid of having children, of messing them up. But Mitch knew what to do. He was kind and unlucky and he knew what he was doing and it was nice for Victor to be able to depend on someone else. It was nice to trust someone so completely, for them to trust you so completely that they would relax, unconscious before you.

A strand of Mitch’s hair was hanging over his face, no doubt tickling his nose and Victor raised his hand to brush it aside.

And then he had heard Sydney’s alarm. Mitch stiffened on instinct, and Victor rose from his bed, silently. He kept his hands to himself and tried to ignore the tug in his gut. He tried to ignore the moan from Sydney’s room, where she was trying to rally herself to face the day. And mostly, he tried to ignore the way Mitch was looking at him, with hope for _something_ and Victor wished he knew what it was so Victor could give it to him.

This morning, Victor woke up alone, and the feeling had never been more disorienting.

Every week had been like that. Hell. They were a reminder of what he didn’t have, of the life he didn’t actually have.  It was all too much like his childhood—too fake.

 Sydney didn’t like soccer. She didn’t like Tiffany. She didn’t like the popular crowd in her school and what she really wanted to do was learn more about gardening.

She had always been a quiet kid and Victor had wanted to help her come out of her shell, not build a new one around her. The longer he spent with her, the longer he saw her put up walls, the more he wished that he really was someone who could parent her the way she needed.

But instead they were here, in suburbia.

They had to get somewhere else.

Tomorrow Victor was taking Sydney into town, to look at an antique market. But he didn’t even know if Sydney would like it, or if she was just trying to please them.

Now Sydney was holding up a 10-pound free weight and Victor wondered what she would rather be doing.

When Mitch looked up from helping Sydney, he met Victor’s eyes. He was laughing at something Sydney had said and there was an open invitation for Victor to join them. All Victor wanted was to reach over and be apart of it. To ask Mitch what he wanted, what Victor could do. But not here. Not in his basement in their fake house in suburbia. Not with this fake life.

 

#

 

Cindy Tenenboym was hollow. But she was _alive._ No one had come back to finish the job. To the hospital staff and her parents, she had recounted all she could remember again and again but she left one detail out.

One name.

_Chad._

Cindy was going to find out who had hit her. And she was going to find out who Chad was. And she was going to find Hanan.

Hanan had been a computer science major once upon a time, she may have been able to find out anything on the internet she wanted. But Cindy was an actor. She was 23, getting a MFA in theatre. She was no computer hacker. But in her undergrad, her second major had been accounting.

Cindy knew how to find a liar. And she knew how to follow money.

And she had finally found someone who might be able to make up the expertise she was lacking.

In the hospital, on her laptop (because her phone didn’t have her VPN, because her phone could be traced) Cindy looked up the address that was a four-hour drive from here.

Without Hanan’s theories, without her desire to teach Cindy the realities of making it as a computer programmer—without Cindy’s A+ in her accounting fraud course—if her parents had not been one corporate lawyer and another reporter both obsessed with teaching her about shell corporations and how to find the _truth—_ without all of that she would not have been able to him find. Possibly, no one else would. But Cindy looked down at the name on the house listing.

Mitchell Turner.

He would know how to help. He would know, or he would go to jail for fraud.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad so many people are enjoying it! I've been really busy but I have all the chapters done, I just need to back sure that I like the way they look. if you have something to say, feel free to say it!


	5. Bad Luck, Fate and Missed Opportunities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch is really trying to avoid his bad luck. Victor is really trying to get his act together. Doesn't matter in the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad that some people seem to be enjoying it! Hopefully the numbers of people dedicated to this fic grow. This are heating up! Other things are going downhill. Stay turned for more!

Mitch, naively, hopefully, had thought his curse had gone. That there would be no more inexplicable bad luck. But now a 23-year-old girl in high top sneakers and a too starched blazer was threating to send him to jail for fraud. Victor and Sydney were in town, at an antique market and Mitch was supposed to join them later for lunch. Mitch was not going to make it for lunch.

“Look!” she said. “I’m saying that I need help, I don’t want to try to have you arrested, but I need to find my friend Hanan and I need someone with computer expertise.”

“And you decided blackmail, which is _illegal_ , was the best thing to do, instead of trying to resolve matters legally? Who are you?”

“Ah…my name is…uh…Cindy. Cindy’s fine. And well, you see I’m not sure if I can trust the law. See my friend Hanan was a bit of a…” Cindy made a see saw gesture with her hand. “I’m worried the government might be involved.” She was still standing outside the front door to the Turner house and had yet to come in. Mitch had seen someone looking at his listing, and he even knew a few things about Cindy, but he could not understand _why_ this girl was trying to blackmail him. Did she see him? Then again, she wasn’t asking him to do much other than find a young girl. It wouldn’t take long.

“What was you friend involved in?” Mitch asked. “Is it dangerous to find her?”

“No, no. She was just…uh…researching.”

“Researching what?”

“EOs…”

Of course. Of course. Just Mitch’s luck.

“I can’t help you,” Mitch said. And then Cindy rose to eye level and pointed to him.

“Listen here, I need to find Hanan okay. I was hit by a car and I’m worried whoever is after her is—”

Part of Mitch wanted to ask her if she realized how dangerous this was, but the bigger part of Mitch was realizing that this girl was 5’3 and should not have been able to look him in the eye. Sure enough, when he looked down she was floating almost one foot off the ground.

Perfect.

Absolutely perfect.

“Look, Cindy Tenenboym of 342 Broan Avenue, you're in trouble you can't imagine,” Mitch said. “I’ll help you find your friend, but any threats are only going to harm you.”

Cindy opened her mouth to say something, but Mitch only looked down until Cindy was looking down too. She dropped her finger.

“If I could find out you were looking for me, so could anyone. You aren’t as secure as you think, and if someone really is out to hurt your friend…You’re in a lot of trouble here, Cindy.” Cindy looked crestfallen. Mitch didn’t even waver. He had always known he was going to help. “I’ll help you. As long as I’m back before Monday…my husband has to run for the PTA, it’s complicated.” Mitch wished he was more eloquent and didn’t sound jumbled. Cindy nodded anyway and sank slowly to the ground. “First, we have to go back to your apartment to look for clues.” They’d have to go check that no bugs had been implanted and no one was surveying her, he didn’t say. “I’ll need to pack, but I’ll see you later.”

Cindy opened her mouth to say something, but Mitch was already stepping back inside. She hadn’t told him where she was staying, but it would be easy enough to find out.

 Mitch texted Victor that he was going to be late and hoped that whatever Hanan was involved in Victor and Sydney would be safe from it. After all, Mitch wasn’t an EO. Mitch had never really had a family, not since his mother died. And now that he finally had one, he wasn’t going to see it torn apart again and he wasn’t about to let Victor put himself in the middle of a dangerous situation just because he was feeling antsy. Tracking someone down was a simple endeavour. It shouldn’t be dangerous.

Mitch left the house again with his laptop and car keys but Cindy was still there, staring inside at the picture on the wall.

“Is this your daughter?” she asked.

“Yes,” Mitch said. And he meant it.

                                                                                   

#

 

Victor twisted his wedding ring as he sat on the edge of Mitch’s bed. Sydney was having a sleepover with Helen’s daughter Tiffany and all their ilk and Victor was trying to figure out if leaving Terrence in the hospital was safe. Mitch had been hired on for a job today too and things were happening quickly.

Victor wasn’t even sure why Mitch had taken the job. He could have asked, but it was Mitch’s business. Instead, he sighed, shuffling further back on the bed.

“You’re not going to sleep tonight.” Mitch said as he stepped out of the bathroom. He still had toothpaste on the corner of his mouth. Victor could not stop staring at it. Mitch was distracted. It was no secret that Victor was agitated. Not when earlier today he’s spent several hours pacing the living, blacking out lines of text from their newest Home and Garden magazine. But Mitch hadn’t been agitated until recently. 

“Neither are you,” Victor said. He wracked his brain for a reason. They were both worried about Sydney. Worried that the girls might try to prank her. Worried that they might uncover something. Just worried. Sydney’s parents hadn’t cared for her, and Victor knew that feeling well, and her sister, who had seemed like the only one who really loved her, had shot her. Victor and Mitch were the only people she had left. But was that enough to explain Mitch’s behaviour? Simple worry?

“You know, I’m busy with the client this weekend. You’ll have to take her shopping.”

“Shopping’s easy.”

“Well she needs new underwear and better sports bras. It’ll be awkward. I almost suggested Susan take her, but Sydney wouldn’t want to.”

“She’d probably rather go with Jack. Should I bring her along? I can just pay for whatever she buys, is that normal? Is that weird?”

Mitch shrugged. He climbed into the bed and turned on the TV and motioned for Victor to sit beside him and watch. Victor moved over as the TV blared to life.

“If…” Victor trailed off. “Is there something else bothering you? If there’s anything you need we should go and get it.”

Mitch paused. He shifted position, his knee brushing against Victor’s, the simplest of moments. Victor’s heart pounded in his chest.

Mitch and Victor were both adults here. They should act like adults and communicate. Victor wasn’t a child anymore. He wasn’t a child at the Vales who had to do everything himself, who could have depended on no one else. He didn’t have to second guess all of his choices anymore. He could make mistakes. There were people looking out for him.

Mitch said something. He must have said something. Because the silence turned awkward and Victor realized he had been staring at Mitch’s nose and not processing anything. Victor’s fingers twitched on the bed and he closed his eyes.

“It’s just the job,” Mitch said. He leaned back into the headboard, and the bed dipped with his weight. Victor could practically feel the heat radiating off of him in a way he’d never noticed before.

“It’ll be fine,” Victor said, throat tightening. “You’re—” Brilliant. Amazing. “Incredibly skilled. I’m sure you’ll handle it.” Victor cracked open his eye, to gauge Mitch’s reaction, but Mitch was turning the wedding band on his finger.

“Is it the wrong size?”

“No. Just not used to rings. But I don’t mind it.” There was something underneath the words. Something Mitch wanted but wasn’t saying. Maybe Mitch didn’t know how to say it, but Mitch wasn’t someone to keep secrets. Maybe the pounding in his chest was getting to Victor, making him second guess everything he did. Things had been easy between them before.

“I don’t mind the domesticity,” Victor said. “It’s nice.” Mitch smiled, soft, his nose scrunched up. Victor swallowed, trying to pretend the two were unrelated. “Of course, it would be better if we were anywhere, but _here_. If we—” It would be better if they had their own life. Victor wanted to say. Better if they were actually married. All at once, Victor was lightheaded. He could have stopped it, he could have buried that delicate, airy feeling in his chest, and hardened himself. But he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to be implacable and unmoveable now. “After this,” Victor said, clearing his throat. “We’ll move to a city. We’ll find somewhere.”

“I don’t mind it either,” Mitch said, deliberately, and there was a weight to those words that settled on top of Victor’s chest like some kind of fluffy animal “For a long time, I didn’t think I’d have it.”

“Because of prison?”

“Not many people are willing to marry gay ex-cons. Especially ones who look like me.”

Victor’s immediate response was to suggest the Mitch was very attractive, which was true, and that, now that Mitch spent his days in sweaters and buttons ups he looked almost as kind as he actually was. Or perhaps, Victor would point out all of Mitch’s other good qualities: his intelligence, the crinkle in his nose when he laughed, his private smile when he saw Sydney succeed, the way he fed Dol table scraps when no one was looking, or the sharp, sense of purpose he seemed to carry with him. Mitch thought so much about what he wanted to say. He was unafraid to like what he liked—computers, chocolate milk, late night game shows. Mitch was so good, and anyone would be lucky to have him. The words were half formed on Victor’s tongue, thoughts flowing together, unsure which he should mention first.

 But then the first part of Mitch’s sentence caught up with him.

The reality of the sentence snaked its way through his system with a giddy ease. Victor’s heart thudded in his chest and he leaned against the headboard, thinking. Victor had not considered, really, any sort of romantic reciprocation—he wasn’t sure there was romance to reciprocate. It had not entered his mind as a possibility. And now Mitch was—what was he saying? And his marriage to Victor was—it was not so implausible. It did not have to have any element of fakeness. A nervous laugh bubbled in Victor’s throat and he paused, deciding whether or not to let the feeling pass or sink in.

For one perfect second, he imagined a world where neither of them were ex-cons. Where Eli Ever was dead years ago. A perfect world. One without Serena, without anyone shooting Sydney. A world where everything collided to give him this moment but where everything was different.

Mitch was still looking at him and Victor smiled.

“The it must be fate we found each other,” Victor said, even though it was cheesy and he wished he said something better. Something deeper, something meaningful, something about how available and attracted to men Victor was and how much he didn’t want to screw up what they had. He wanted to say something that would sum up all his feelings without being a marriage proposal. Without having to admit that he wanted to date Mitch. It was easy to think in terms of marriage when they were fake married, when, even if they moved, fake marriage would be a good cover story. But what Victor wanted wasn’t fake, and because it was real, that meant it could crumble.

“Yeah, it must be fate,” Mitch said, and he laughed. Victor’s mouth twitched just to watch it and the debate in his heart was settled. Victor knew what he wanted. He didn’t want it like he’d ever wanted anything else. Before, want for him had been like trying to hold the sun in his hands, too intense, burning. Now it was like running his hands through Dol’s fur. Comforting, silk smooth.

Victor smiled back, small, barely noticeable and he closed his eyes and relaxed. For the past decade he had been consumed with revenge, with _justice_ , and then with running. But he was almost past that now. He was edging farther away from the things he had lost, and closer to all the things he had to gain.

Tomorrow, Victor would tell Mitch about his feelings. Even if it didn’t go anywhere, they were _adults_ and Mitch was someone Victor could tell things to. Mitch was wasn’t going to leave on a whim. For once since his life had ended, Victor could finally start planning for the future: and his future was going to include Mitch.

They fell asleep, side by side and when Victor woke up in the middle of the night with a crack in his neck and a smile on his face, he decided to at least tell Mitch some part of his feelings then and there. But when he turned Mitch was gone.


	6. Missing in Action: Bake Sale Addition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen has a secret, Victor hates his parents, Terrence has a dog, had a dog, has a dog, and the Turner family isn't splitting up.

Victor was burning. No longer simmering quietly under the surface like he had in prison, and not smoldering like he was sometimes around Sydney or Mitch. Victor was burning white hot, gripping the bake sale table, and trying to remind himself why dropping everyone in the room was a back idea.

 Mitch was still missing.

 Sydney and Victor stood by their table quietly, waiting for the moment people had bought enough brownies so that they could leave, so that they could plan. Victor had been trying to think of a plan already, but Susan would not shut up. The noise from the rest of the gymnasium was not helping either: chirper parents buying food to show what good, supportive parents they were, PTA members extoling the virtues of whatever homemade, deconstructed nightmare they had produced, kids screaming, or running around, bored out of their minds because they’d been promised bake goods, _sweets,_ and everything here was tasteless and revolting.

Victor didn’t need to be here, not if he was going to rig the vote, but there was Helen and her husband and their daughter Tiffany, smiling and handing out their homemade quinoa cookies with kale and wheatgrass and no flour. If Mitch were here Victor would have made a snide comment about the appropriation of quinoa leading to markups in South America and barring people from eating something that used to be a staple food.

But Mitch wasn’t here.

Sydney was rubbing at her arm, at the place where she’d been shot. She hadn’t done that in a long time. Not because she hadn’t wanted to, but because it was a slip of their cover, and so far Victor and Sydney had not let their cover slip, not truly. But Victor’s cover was not slipping so much as melting off, and the sight of Syd only made it worse.

She was uncomfortable in her baggy jersey and basketball shorts. She wanted to feel something closed around her. Whenever she was stressed she’d bring her arms around herself, tie up her coat or jacket, and pull herself inward. But the shorts and shirts were flowy and it was clear she felt exposed.

Victor remembered the night he’d found her, remembered her rain drenched leggings and the hair plastered to her face. He hadn’t used to believe in fate. Not before Sydney. And now not even with Mitch. But fate happened to put you on the right path, and if anything, something was screaming at Victor that this was the _wrong_ one.

Victor glared intently at Helen and her husband across the gym, at their rings which were clean, but not shiny and new anymore, and their daughter with her diamond stubbed earrings. Usually he didn’t look closely at them, he avoided being in their line of sight altogether but now they seemed to represent everything Victor hated about being here and he took their mannerisms apart with a vicious certainty. And then Victor saw something. He saw Helen looking between people, as if she could see a single thread connecting them. She was looking at this air and her eyes were cataloguing it and with a sinking sensation Victor saw her turn and make eye contact. Then she looked for Mitch, and finding him absent, she smiled and came over.

Victor’s knuckles tightened on the table and Sydney instinctively stepped beside him. Victor wanted to leave immediately, but Susan was still here. For god’s sake Helen’s husband was here too, but that didn’t stop Helen from stepping up to the Turner’s Brownie Booth.

“My, my, now where’s Mitch?” She batted her eye lashed and Susan snorted, low under her breath. Victor was not in the mood and all at once his careful mask cracked. He was tired of this and Susan had already thought he’d gone to jail and if Mitch was missing they had more important things to worry about that the fucking PTA. When Victor had woken up alone he had checked the whole house before he noticed Mitch’s text, telling him he had to work the whole weekend. But it was Monday, and Mitch hadn’t texted back since yesterday. He was supposed to be back by now. He was supposed to never had left. Victor and Sydney should be out looking for him.

He could be dead. Kidnapped. The police could be on their way for Sydney next.

Helen reached towards Victor’s arm and he recoiled.

“What the f—” Victor took a deep breath. “What do you want Helen?” His tone was the iciest he’d let it be since getting here, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m only wondering why your husband isn’t here to support you?”

“And I’m wondering why you keep hitting on married men who aren’t interested in you and who are perfectly happy. What do you honestly expect is going to happen Helen?”

Helen opened her mouth, eyes flickering to Susan whose jaw had dropped open. Victor didn’t care anymore. They weren’t going to be here in a month.

“Leave my family alone Helen,” Victor said.

“Look, I was only trying to be _friendly_ but obviously you and Mitch are having—”

“I’m very happy with Mitch!” Victor said, which was true. “I love Mitch and I love my family and that’s more than you can say about yours.”

Helen’s lip pulled back into a taut smile and her eyes flashed with something hot.

“Victor, I can see it, you don’t have to lie to me, while you may love Mitch, are you really in love with him? The romantic spark between you is just that, a little spark, not a fire, not a strong—”

“My daughter is right here! What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” Victor threw up his hands and now he was making a scene and heads were swiveling in his direction. But he didn’t care. He was going to get out of here and go get Terrence, who could breathe on his own now and then the three of them would find Mitch, and Victor would explain to Terrence about EOs and—

Chad walked into the bake sale hall.

Helen was still sputtering. Susan was containing a fierce grin. Sydney was _fuming_.

“Stop. Stop trying to break up my parents,” she said, low serious. “Just because you’re willing to cheat on your husband doesn’t mean you should ruin other people’s marriage.”  Sydney’s arms were crossed in front of her, a gesture that was too much her own. She shivered, close, and Victor wanted to take her and run.

But then he saw it again. Helen’s weird tick. Before he had a moment to process it, he saw Helen’s husband, Bryan, glance over, uninterested, and their daughter Tiffany roll her eyes with thinly veiled hatred. There was no love lost between them.

And Chad was staring directly at all of them.

“We’re leaving.” Victor decided immediately, PTA be damned. “I’m sorry Susan, that I have to ask you to run this in my stead, but I will not stand here and let my family be harassed.”

Helen’s eyes were flickering to some imaginary line between him and Sydney and then between them and Susan. Apparently, she didn’t see whatever it was she wanted to see because she was frowning, arms folded across her chest as Victor and Sydney made their way to the door, stopping dead in their tracks.

Chad had cleared a small path by the door and he was grinning ear to ear.

“I know I said that I would do this once I got elected to the PTA, but I figured why wait? Why deny children the opportunity if I didn’t make on the board! So, I called the Vales in early and they’ve agreed to do a reading later today at the library.”

Chad was clapping and so was everyone else, except Victor who was staring at his parents, and Helen who was staring at the space between them.

 

#

 

Mitch found Hanan. He had even spent a long time talking to Cindy dissuading her from threatening people and trying to get her to be sympathetic to joining up with a group of EOs just in case Victor wanted to recruit her. He’d spent a decent amount of time tracking Hanan down, and more time thinking deeply about his feelings towards his growing family, and trying to figure out what Victor was trying to tell him. Maybe he should have spent more time listening to Cindy.

The problem was that Hanan had not been kidnapped. The problem was that Hanan did not want to be found and now they had found her.

“Look,” Hanan said, keeping the door one third open, refusing to let them in. “I appreciate that you came looking for me, but I’m fine.”

“But she’s not,” Mitch said, jerking a thumb at Cindy. “She got hit by a car and she thinks it might be because of what you were doing. If you’re involved in something dangerous she has the right to know, to keep herself safe.”

“Yeah!” Cindy stomped her foot for emphasis. “I listened to all your crackpot theories and if one of them turned out to be true and now it’s going to get me killed you better tell me Hanan, okay, I didn’t have a near death experience just so you could—”

“You had a near death experience?” Hanan asked. Mitch held up his hand, signalling to Cindy that she shouldn’t answer that,

“Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing I should talk about in the hall, does it?” Cindy asked, inspecting her nails. Hanan sighed loudly and flung open the door. Mitch stepped in gingerly, Cindy hovering in behind him.

The room was small, low ceiling a few inches above his head, three quarters the size of his current bedroom but much bigger than the prison cell he’d spent the last eight years in. It was neat and orderly, except for one wall of the room that was covered in white boards.

“Look,” Hanan flopped down on her sofa bed, still in its bed mode. “I found out about EOs okay, they’re real. I know you don’t believe me but it’s _true_ this time, I swear it. All my other theories went nowhere but this—it was something. And then it turns out some guy is going around murdering all these EOs and then it made the news, this guy, Eli something, and I had to bolt. Once they said they were looking for other people with connection to this guy, once they started to say he was a mad man and he was going to jail and they started hushing up all the information about EOs I knew I had to get out, easy as that. I didn’t think you knew enough that they would come after you, but Cindy…” Hanan held Cindy’s hands softly, rubbing circles on the top of her knuckles. “I didn’t want you to get hurt, yeah, that’s _why_ I left.”

Mitch considered this.

“Do you know anyone named Chad?”

Hanan laughed. “Do I know Chad? Of course, I do.”

“He’s the one who hit me with his car,” Cindy said. “I think he’s the one who’s trying to hush up all the EO stuff.”

Hanan’s face fell. “Oh no. It’s much worse than that I’m afraid.”

“Well, I don’t have a lot of time, I need to get back home by Monday and it took most of yesterday to get here.”

Hanan shook her head. “You’re not going to make it back by Monday if you have to deal with Chad.”

 

#

 

Helen was an EO. Had to be. Whatever it was she was looking at when she looked between people it was something real, tangible, and it was giving her information and Victor couldn’t believe his luck, but he had to leave, now.

“Do I know you?” Victor’s father asked. Helen’s husband was walking over to them, but Helen had her eyes fixed on the Vales.

“I don’t think so. I’m a travel writer though, perhaps I attended a conference you were at?”

“No…” his mother said, eyes tracing the planes of his face, going to his long hair, before settling on Sydney.

“Well, if you excuse me, my daughter and I were just leaving.”

“Victor,” Helen said, reaching for his arm, stopping him. The Vale’s reacted at the name and Victor’s heart pounded in chest. He had counted on his parents not attending his funeral, not seeing his dead face, not remembering what he looked like and not expecting to run into their dead son. But this…God he should have just picked a different name.

“Victor,” Helen said again, “You didn’t tell me you knew the _Drs._ _Vale_.” She was grinning, beaming, and this was her petty revenge for him rejecting her and now she was attracting the attention of Chad.

“I have to go, Helen.”

“Yes, to find your husband who’s, mysteriously, not here to support his family.”

Victor wanted to snap that trying to cheat on your husband wasn’t supporting your family either, but instead he pulled free from her grip and marched to the door. Helen was on him again in seconds. Sydney tried to put herself between them, but she fumbled, unsure, not confident in manipulate and cajoling the way Victor was. Victor had the urge to wrap an arm around her shoulder. Instead he placed a hand on Sydney’s back and increased his pace. Helen followed.

“You don’t know where he is, do you?” she asked. Her husband was here now, staring at him. The Vales were still by the door, staring at him. And no matter how uncomfortable Victor made them, they wouldn’t stop. “He was supposed to meet you here after work, and he’s not here and now you’re worried?”

“No.”

“You’re lying,” Bryan, Helen’s husband said. And with a sickening, unbelieving clarity Victor realized that he was probably an EO too.

“I don’t have time for this.”  Victor shoved them both outside, ignoring the Vales, ignoring the sidelong looks Chad was shooting them.

He shoved Helen and Bryan out into the parking lot.

“Listen, I don’t have time for you to try and use your EO powers on me to figure out what’s happening, but I’m not going to fucking sleep with you Helen.”

Bryan and Helen recoiled, their secret exposed. Sydney smiled and a small portion of Victor was bolstered by it. He wasn’t going to psychoanalyze why. He knew why. He wondered if Sydney knew why.

“Now, if you don’t want me to go to the authorities, how about you tell me whether or not you can find my husband? Because if you can’t you’re going to have to move to a new place, because I swear to god I will not tolerate you staying here.” Victor’s threats were mostly empty, but not entirely, they were true enough that Helen and Bryan’s eyes were wide with fear and not being used to being spoken back to.

“I can see the connections between people,” Helen said. “I can see the type of love, familial, platonic, sexual, romantic…it’s how I knew you and Mitch were on the outs, your romantic love is too small, it’s the kind you have when you just get married, not when you’ve been married for four years. And there’s no sexual attraction.” Victor wanted to hit her, wanted to point out that sexual attraction wasn’t a necessary component in a relationship, wanted to point out how no matter who he loved there would never be any sexual attraction. But there was no time for that.

“So, you can see this thread and use it to find him?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Get in the car Helen. We have a stop to make along the way. Do you own a shovel?”

 

#

 

On the one hand Terrence was not interested in helping a bunch of random white people solve a mystery just because he had powers. On the other hand, the little girl (half pacific islander? Maybe East Asian?) had brought his dog back to life, and her father had gotten rid most of his pain.

On the other, other hand, this could be dangerous, and he wasn’t going to risk his life again.

“Look,” Helen started, Victor cleared his throat to block out the noise of her speaking.

 “Wait outside. Syd,” he said, “keep an eye on them.”

Sydney nodded and escorted Helen and the other white guy out, as Terrence sat up in his hospital bed. His newly undead dog, Murphy, wagged her tail beside Victor. Victor had come to talk to him yesterday and to figure out where the dog was buried, so he and Sydney could go get it and Terrence wasn’t sure if those other two, Helen and the one with glasses, even knew what this little girl could do.

“Ignore them, you’re not helping them. You’re helping me find my husband, not them. And that help extends both ways. Anything you need I will try my best to get. Even if I have to use Helen.”

Terrence sat further up. “You said someone was coming to kill me,” he said. “Leaving me here isn’t going to be safe.”

“Nowhere is safe, but with us, if you die, at lest we have Sydney to bring you back to life.”

That was messed up. But on the other hand, they were talking about Victor’s husband, the little girl’s father. It was understandable they would do whatever they could to help him.

“I just need you to deliver a message to him,” Victor said. “You don’t have to leave the car, in fact, you don’t have to leave the hospital room. I’ll call you with the message to deliver and as long as you can get it to him—”

“Wait message?”

Victor exhaled slowly, but his hands were clenching and unclenching in nervousness. Terrence tried to remind himself that the husband was probably safe, but sweat was collecting on his palms, just watching them.

“Ever since you woke up,” Victor said. “You know, if you focus, people have been able to read your thoughts.” Yesterday, Victor had explained what an EO was, abstractly, hinting that they were real but stepping around the issue. But now that he was explaining what Terrence could do, how he’d come into these powers in the first place, it made a lot more sense.

“Okay…” Terrence said. The idea that he had superpowers was still a little messed up, the idea that Helen had them was even weirder.

“Please,” Victor said, and Terrence didn’t have to have supernatural powers to see how much Victor loved his husband. “Look, I also have information that will help you sue Barkhouse, Silva’s husband. And when this is all over I can offer to help you train, your powers. There quite a few of us who are all working together. Helen’s not included.”

Terrence smiled and sighed. Suing people wasn’t his top concern, but Victor didn’t seem to be asking a lot. “I’ll, I guess? If I don’t have to leave here, then it’s fine. I’ll probably have to have a picture or something, a video of him so I can see who he is? I don’t really know, but I can try to give him a message. But I want one of you to stay here and make sure no one is coming after me. If they someone took your husband and I’m getting involved, I need some assurance.” Terrence leaned over the hospital bed to scratch the top of his dog’s head. Murphy might help a little with the safety, and maybe the threat of suing Barkhouse would be helpful too.

“I’ll leave Bryan with you.”

“And one more thing.”

“Whatever it is you want.”

“Listen, I get that you’re worried, and I can respect that, but I’m not going to help you, just because, okay?

“Yesterday and just now you were talking about having some kind of group of what did you call it, EOs? But listen, if you want me to join this group, I need to know I can trust you. You need to find that guy who stabbed me and you need to take care of it. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, okay? It’s not about suing Silva, I need to make sure everyone is okay.”

Victor nodded, eyes flickering, calculating. Terrence didn’t like it, but at least Victor wasn’t showing any signs of dishonesty.

“You’ll have to get access to the police report, so I imagine it might take some time,” Terrence said, “but once you’ve started on that I can help you.”

“I already looked at the police report,” Victor muttered, but he seemed distracted, out of sorts, caught between two warring notions, like he had been putting on an act for a long time and wasn’t sure how much it he still needed. “The reports were on my husband’s laptop…” Victor scratched at his neck, still thinking. Terrence swallowed, even though he wasn’t sure why. “This guy who stabbed you,” Victor said at last. “He was older, big shoulders, but generally lean, kept going to his hip like he had a gun?”

“Yeah.”

“The report said they had a partial print in the database but that would take too long to get a match…” Victor was talking to himself, but it was clear he had been looking into this, just like he said when he’d first come to visit Terrence. Terrence wasn’t sure why, exactly, if it was purely for show, or purely to recruit Terrence to his weird X-men group. “Before he died, the security guard said his name started with a C, so that will narrow down the searches…my husband’s better at this, if he was here, he could look into the database…”

“He had a jacket, I think with his initials” Terrence said, suddenly remembering his monogrammed jacket. “I only remember D.”

“D. C. D. Dunker,” Victor said automatically, and Terrence nodded, the name familiar.

“Maybe? I don’t think he said his name, but it seems familiar.”

 “No. I know who stabbed you. It was Chad Dunker.” The certainty in his tone was startling.

“Well, I…I guess that’s a start.”

Victor seemed to think of that as acquiescence to help, but Terrence’s mind was whirring with the possibility as Victor pulled out his phone, searching for a video of his husband. The name Dunker sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it yet. And at the same time, he knew, beyond a doubt that Victor was right. Chad Dunker has stabbed him.

“This is him, my husband,” Victor said, showing a picture of a tall, smartly dressed Samoan man with a kind intelligence in his eyes. Terrence tried to imagine this man, Mitch Turner, and he tried to think of him and project his thoughts to the best of his abilities.

_Your husband is coming for you. Your family is going to save you._

And then Terrence thought about Chad Dunker. For all Victor was saying, there was still one thing he hadn’t touched on. The why. Why had Chad Dunker stabbed him? Why did Victor immediately have a name in mind already?

And how was this all connected to Silva’s drug trails and Mitch Turner?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. I am sure you know that the plot is thickening, and the EOs are coming into the light. There is more to come. Much More. If you would like to see more of something in particular, let me know. if you would like to see less of something, I am all ears as well.
> 
> If you have any good puns, dad jokes, or pop culture references you want cleverly integrated in the story, I'll see what I can do. If you have a favourite line, an amusing typo, a least favourite scene, feel free to drop a line. If you have a cat, or a dog, I would love to here about them.


	7. White Collar Crime: The Chadening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch has a plan, Victor has a plan, Susan's husband is an SOB.

Hanan sat on the edge of the bed, adjusting her meticulous crafted corkboard. Mitch had spent the last several hours confirming what she was talking about, looking up information in public databases and private databases and probably top-secret databases too.

And it seemed like she was telling the truth about why she had run and who Chad was. The only part that Mitch couldn’t understand about this whole affair was the why.

Chad Dunker had been a senior researcher at the Barkhouses lab that Victor had sabotaged. He had been running all manner of experiments on pain and adrenalin and frequently collaborated with the police, of which his son, Chad Dunker Junior (the man who had recently moved closer to Mitch and Victor) was apart of. Then Chad Sr. had left officially to work with some private correction facility.

But Chad Dunker was also obsessed with the supernatural. Not just EOs the way that Victor understood them, but on figuring out the existential nature of why they were. How to make more. How to stop them. What EOs _meant_. Hanan had met him on a forum, because he seemed like the only person taking this seriously, but she had quickly learned to stay away from him.

Of course, like most old men denied by a young woman, he didn’t seem to grasp this concept and continued to try and talk to her. He’d known about Eli Ever, about his hunting down of EOs and once Hanan saw that he was getting too close to Eli she’d vanished.

But why had he hit Cindy with his car? By accident? Was he trying to create an EO like Victor and Eli had done or was he simply been trying to find out what happened to Hanan and accidently been in the wrong place at the wrong time?

And yet, there was the message Mitch had received from Terrence a few minutes ago. Or, Mitch assumed it was Terrence given his powers.

The first part was that Victor was coming for him, the second was that Chad Dunker Sr. had been the one to stab Terrence.

The motivation here was even weaker. Terrence was just a harmless PhD student, and while old racist white men in general might accuse Terrence of being dangerous, Terrence’s attacker, _in specific,_ had accused him of tampering with the drug trial. But why did Chad Dunker want the drug trial to succeed that much in the first place?

“You okay?” Cindy asked, shoveling stir fry rice into her mouth. She was smiling around her fork, but Mitch was beginning to think it was an act to appease their recent captor.

“I’m trying to think of a motive,” Mitch said. Hanan clicked her tongue.

“That’s your problem, there’s no motive with a guy like Chad. He wants what he wants and that’s it.”

“He attempted to kill two people, there has to be a reason.”

Besides, there were too many coincidences that just didn’t add up. Hanan shrugged. Mitch looked to the locked door and then back up at the dismantled camera hanging above it. When they had first gotten here, and Hanan had explained he would not make it home on Monday, Mitch had thought it was because there was something he would need to investigate. He didn’t think that Hanan meant someone was following them and would lock them in Hanan’s apartment for the foreseeable future.

One minute, Mitch had been verifying Hanan’s claims and trying to text Victor, the next all power had been cut off and Hanan’s place had become a dead zone. The door had opened, a camera had been set up and then some kind of barricade was now trapping them in Hanan’s one room apartment with no where to go.

They had been here in this apartment slash prison cell for 18 hours, and while Cindy was content to eat and Hanan was certain that Chad would get tired and come talk to them eventually, Mitch was not so sure.

At least there was food, as Cindy was aptly demonstrating. But Mitch couldn’t figure out the thread of what was going on. If Dunker’s behaviour and motivation was this erratic, then someone else had to be calling the shots, but who?

For one brief moment Mitch didn’t understand, and then, completely unbidden to him, he got it.

“Susan.”

Cindy and Hanan turned to him abruptly.

Susan went to jail for embezzling and tax fraud, no company was going to hire her now.  And before she worked for a pharmaceutical company and—the pieces were falling into place. Susan asks Dunker to investigate what was going on, but Dunker had own problems—

“No actually that makes no sense.”

It could be Susan’s _husband_.  They had both invested in drug companies that Susan had worked for and that were affiliated with Silva. And Susan’s ex-husband was now the one with disposable income to investigate it. He sent Dunker’s son to check up on his ex-wife to make sure no one got wise to what was happening, and he sent Dunker to investigate the fraud. Of course, Dunker Sr. would have expected and recognized the signs of EOs, the signs of Victor. Then Dunker Sr. would have tried first to see if Hanan was around (hitting Cindy by accident, hence the swearing from the passenger) and then cornering Terrence, turning racist and violent when he couldn’t put the pieces together.

For a moment Mitch celebrated having figured it out.

But knowing that Mr. McCaffery (unless McCaffery was Susan’s maiden’s name) was behind this, didn’t actually tell him how he was going to get out of here.

But it did clue him in to the fact the Susan’s ex-husband might not know the various incredibly illegal things his employee for hire was doing. Chad Junior would be useful to Mr. McCaffery, since he was a cop he could bend the law in all sorts of ways, but he wouldn’t do it to save McCaffery, only his father, and that could be a neat little wedge between the two.

For a brief moment, Mitch felt like Victor, trying to manipulate everyone around him to suit his needs. But at the end of the day, all this as academic, theoretical. Mitch was intelligent and hard working, but he wasn’t a schemer, not at heart. Mitch was a doer.

What he needed to work on now wasn’t so much the scheme, but figure out how to get to Victor, and how to make sure Cindy and Hanan were safe.

Carefully Mitch stood up and walked over to the busted camera, examining the wire. How difficult would it be to short the fuse at the other end? How difficult would it be to start a fire near Chad Dunker while he and the girls were safe here? After all, Cindy could float, which meant if they could get out the window and cling to her, both him and Hanan could still be safe and sound.

For a moment, Mitch stood there, thinking. If the camera had worked, Dunker might have thought he was staring absently into space. But Mitch was calculating, and when he was done, he put his plan into action.

 

#

 

Victor wanted to throw Helen out of the car, but managed to cling onto the wheel and refrain.

“You know, for all of your claims, I wouldn’t have hit on you if you’d been in love with your husband,” Helen was picking the dirt from under her nails in the back seat. Sydney frowned from the backseat, wordlessly. She was worried about something. Her hair was loose from it’s ponytail and she was fiddling with the hair tie, the sleeves of her hoodie pulled over her hands. She was worried, but rather than voicing her concerns she seemed determined to deal with it silently. This was the kind of look that young teen Victor had been fond off and Victor didn’t want Sydney to grow up to be like him. Victor who had almost killed himself, accidentally killed one of his best friends and then was imprisoned by the other.

“You’re not innocent,” Sydney said, looking at the tie in her lap and not at Helen. “You know Victor loves him, platonically, you said so. So, it’s still wrong to break them up.” She turned again, glaring out the window. Her hands clenching and unclenching. She was worried about Mitch, but there was something else. Helen was playing into a fear of hers.

“Well,” Helen said. “I never.”

“Besides,” Sydney said, almost too quietly to hear. “I don’t know why you’d be interested, you’re old enough to be Victor’s mother. Can’t you just leave us alone and find someone else?”

“Syd—” Victor chastised. He hadn’t called her that since they’d move here, but he’d slipped up earlier and there was no point of keeping the pretense now “It doesn’t matter how old she is, it just matters that she’s terrible.” Helen scoffed behind him.

“I’m hardly old enough to be his mother. Our children are the same age.”

“Victor’s thirty and you’re 51,” Sydney said, but seemed to lose the tract of what she was saying. She scratched her head again, and if Victor had really been her father—if he had _properly_ been her father, he’d have figured out why she was so upset.  “But Victor’s right I guess, it’d be just as terrible if you were young...”

“Wait, you’re thirty? You have a thirteen-year-old kid that would mean—”

“32. Anyway, she’s adopted. I didn’t have her at 18—this is all irrelevant. Are we going the right way?”

Helen hmmed and squinted out in front of her. “Yup. More or less.”

“We’ve been driving for hours.”

“Well that’s not my fault. I didn’t kidnap your husband.”

Victor clenched his teeth carefully. He flicked his eyes over to Sydney. It made sense that she was irritable if she was worried of Mitch, but still her mood seemed wrong. It had a kind of defensiveness. Like she was feeling insecure and was trying to take that out on someone else. But even that wasn’t like Sydney, unless she was doing it for Victor’s approval, because she thought that’s what he would have wanted?

Victor frowned.  And then it clicked into place.

“Hey,” Victor said to Sydney. “We’re not going anywhere.” Sydney turned still. Her birth parents had never been there for her, and her sister had shot her, and now here was Helen, trying to tear apart the only family she knew. Even if it was fake. Even if the fakeness would only remind her of how much she wanted the real thing. It was exactly what Victor had been feeling. “You, me and Mitch, we’re a team. A family.”

Sydney smiled, fleetingly.

“Now, what I’d like to know,” Victor said, eyes darting to meet Helen’s in the rear-view mirror. “Is how you and your husband both coincidentally became EOs…”

“Well, first, he’s not my real husband, he’s some guy I met in a support group. Once that Ever freak started killing people I was smart enough to shut up about my power and find a good fake life. My name’s not even Helen. It’s Blythe.”

Of course, it was.

“So, you adopted Tiffany just to keep with the pretense?” Sydney asked carefully, almost wounded. Victor reached a hand over to squeeze her shoulder briefly, then, all out of comforting gestures returned his hand to the wheel.

“No, she was hiding too. It’s not something I expect you to understand. We’re not like you, okay, some big happy family that would die for each other. To be honest, you’re probably one of the most well-adjusted families here. Liz’s children hate her, and Sharon’s husband, oh boy, he is having three affairs, _three,_ and she’s madly in love with him! It’s completely one sided. And Susan’s husband, god, when he was still around, I could tell he didn’t care about his kids. You and Mitch are some of the most devoted fathers in this entire suburb, and you and your child honestly love each other and that’s…I don’t know.”

Sydney turned from the window to look down at Victor.

“Susan’s husband seems…” Victor searched for a word which wasn’t “like an asshole.” He did not find one.

“Well, he was no worse than your parents.”

“My what—”

“The Vales, they’re your parents. I could see the familial relationship. You hate them, but they kind of like you—or the idea of you, the connection is pretty weak. Grew a bit when they saw you, but…” Helen shrugged. Victor mulled over her words carefully.

“I don’t have to justify myself to you.”

 “You don’t. But you’re the one who asked about my life.”

“The Vales aren’t my parents.”

“You don’t look that much like them, but there’s something in the mouth, some kind of thin—”

“You have to be there for a child to be their parents. Not leave them—it doesn’t matter.”

Victor dug into his pocket with one hand and gave his phone to Sydney, telling her to call Terrence. Helen sighed dramatically and flopped down in the back seat.

“The saddest part is that he liked Susan, her husband, in some way. He genuinely cared for her, but whatever warmth she felt for him dwindled with the way he treated those kids, and he wasn’t even abusive, it was just obvious he didn’t care. You know, sometimes I feel sorry for her. But she was the one who left that man with her children for three years, so it’s her own fault whatever happened to them.”

Victor was ready to defend Susan, to point out that she had been arrested and didn’t have a choice, but Terrence picked up.

“I need you to send another message.”

After asking Terrence to send the message Victor reflected back on what Helen had said

“Wait, who did you say Susan’s husband was again?’

“George McCaffery.”

The name sounded familiar and yet Victor couldn’t quiet place it. His fingers tapped on the wheel.

“And George didn’t love his own children?”

Helen clucked her tongue. “Nope.”

“So, what did he do when Susan was gone?”

“He just didn’t see them.”

“But where was he going? What was he doing?” Victor wondered if Susan had been evading taxes by herself or if George had had some hand in it. George McCaffery. George Mc—Victor remembered where he saw the name. George McCaffery was the chair of a group backing Silva’s drug. He had monetary investments in the project.

All at once, Victor had a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end draws near. But what will happen? And who is Chad really? Is Chad all the Chad seems? Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion.


	8. Fuck you George

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mitch tries to rescue the girls. Victor tries to rescue Mitch. Helen surprisingly helps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter left! Will Mitch and Victor work out their relationship problems? Does Chad go to jail! It's almost a wrap folks! 
> 
> If you have any last minute suggestions now's the time to let me know! Before it's all over!

A lot of things happened at once. The room filled with smoke. Hanan yelled about a fire that wasn’t there. Cindy held onto her, floating a foot off the ground. Mitch waited for someone to enter the room so he could restrain them.

No one entered the room.

The smoke grew thick enough for the upstairs neighbours to complain. Cindy couldn’t stop coughing. Mitch's head started to swim, but he focused as the air grew thicker. How long would it take for them to use up all the oxygen? How long would the short circuited camera continue to spark before it burned out and the smoke cleared?

No one entered the room.

Mitch went to the window, a few seconds from trying to kick it in, now that they weren’t being watched. Hanan shouted. Mitch turned around.

And then Mitch saw Chad Dunker, gun in hand, a canister of leaking gas in one hand. If the canister came too close to where Mitch had shorted the camera, this entire place would explode. Chad Dunker seemed not to understand, shouting orders even as Mitch dove and—

Mitch regained consciousness all at once but stayed still. His ears rang slightly, but he was otherwise unhurt. He’d been knocked unconscious, but there hadn’t been an explosion. Hearing no one around, Mitch opened his eyes. Cindy and Hanan were still knocked out on the couch beside him, in the living room of a suburban house not unlike Victor’s and Mitch’s, except for the smell of fear and the lingering odour of decaying flesh.

There was dust on the walls, but the floor was clean, which meant the room was used frequently enough for some cleaning, but no one cared about maintenance. This was Mr. McCaffery’s base. This was where he had been staying, and where he had probably killed the people who lived here.

God.

Mitch looked up at the ceiling, but he could already see Chad Sr coming down the stairs. Chad Sr. with white hair and a face lined with ag There was nothing behind his eyes. Not even blood lust. Mitch recalled that when Cindy had been hit with a car, the drivers had been surprised.

“What do you want with EOs?” Mitch asked. Chad whipped around. Hanan and Cindy were smaller and the sedative was still in their system, but Mitch was a big guy, and even if his hands were bound behind him, it was only a matter of time before he could break free. But he wouldn’t need to break anything.

“Nothing,” Chad said. Mitch wasn’t a schemer, but he had gotten them out of the apartment. And he would get them out of here.

“You never wanted to hurt Hanan or Cindy, did you? You were driving to Hanan’s apartment to warn her. That’s when you accidentally hit Cindy.”

“Listen,” Chad said, then changed his mind. “Shut up.”

“McCaffery’s not going to like what you did. You stabbed someone.”

“I didn’t mean to! I didn’t! He was going to sabotage things, and he _wouldn’t look at me_ and I…” Chad trailed off.

“You don’t know. You don’t know what happened.”

Mitch paused. He stood up from the couch, legs wobblily but sturdy enough to support him. Mitch walked around the coffee table, undoing the restraints on his hands. He kept his moments slow, trying not to startle Chad who had a gun strapped to his belt.

“You hurt innocent kids.”

Chad twisted under Mitch’s gaze. And Mitch knew McCaffery wasn’t here. Chad had come for Hanan, because she was loose thread, and for Mitch, because he was prying, but McCaffery wouldn’t have known there was a threat yet. He would be overseeing his company’s drugs or something. He would be on his way, but he wouldn’t arrive yet.

The delay in taking Hanan and Cindy from the room wasn’t meant to be a danger, it was because there were limited people watching them.

“What do you want Chad? To find an EO? To make one?”

“No! No I—look, just find down. Just sit down.”

“McCaffery will turn you over when he finds out what you did. Your son can’t protect you Chad Dunker.”

All at once, Chad seemed to realize he had not introduced himself. He froze, careful.

“You know who I am?” he asked.

“I know you have been looking for EOs. Hanan told me. But then that thing with Eli Ever…” at the mention of the name, Mitch got what he wanted, Chad perked up. Mitch was running a hunch and he wasn’t eloquent. If Victor was doing this, Mitch could dissect every move Chad or Victor made, find every purpose of every word, but producing it? Mitch steadied himself.

“Why do you want to find Eli Ever?” Mitch asked.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“I know where he is. I know who he is.”

Chad didn’t believe him, but there was hope in his eyes. But then the front door unlocked and McCaffery strolled in, a briefcase in one hand, a gun on his waistband, unfortunate facial hair plastered on. Susan could have done better.

McCaffery went for the gun, but Mitch sat gingerly down on an armchair.

“Just wanted to stretch my legs,” Mitch said. McCaffery hissed, gesturing with the gun. Mitch didn’t move.

“Why did you bring them here!”

“The place was on fire, I couldn’t let them die, we don’t know what they know—”

“Shut up!” McCaffery hissed. He paced around the unconscious girls and then over to Mitch. Mitch did not move.

“Could I get a glass of water?” Mitch asked. McCaffery looked half way between hitting him and shooting him. Mitch had seen their faces, he knew who they were. He couldn’t leave. And yet killing him would be a huge problem.

“Lock the girls up somewhere, somewhere where they can’t _see_ us.” McCaffery ordered.

Obligingly, Chad bent over Hanan and began carrying her up the stairs. McCaffery continued to look down his nose at Mitch.

“So, the hired muscle huh?”

Mitch said nothing.

“You the one who broke into the labs? Who messed with the drugs? That result? It’s fake, it’s sabotage, you’re the kind of big guy who can break in…” McCaffery was talking to himself really. Mitch let him.

“Well now you’re going to die…” McCaffery said.

“Chad Jr. won’t cover for you.” If there was one thing Mitch’s face was good for, it was acting calm. “He only cares about his dad, and once you fire him, it’s over for you.”

McCaffery’s eyes widened, but then he laughed, collapsing on the couch as Chad Sr. came to bring up Cindy.

“Don’t you dare hurt them,” Mitch said, making eye contact with Chad. Chad nodded, and continued on his way as McCaffery ran his tongue until the tops of his teeth.

“You talk big considering I have the gun and you have nothing. Besides, I just won’t fire Chad then.”

“But he’s making a mess of things. He’s getting too many people involved. You can’t keep killing all of them.”

“Are you trying to talk me down?”

“Maybe I’m trying to distract you.”

“From what? Look, now that you’re here, who’s to say I don’t pin the murders on you?”

“I don’t think Chad Jr. would go for that. Not when he’s running for the PTA and his little girl just made the soccer team. He’ll want to keep things clean.”

McCaffery only smiled. But his back was to the door. The problem that McCaffery hadn’t considered was that Mitch had been out for hours, and it had taken McCaffery hours to get here, and coincidentally, Victor had also, been on the road for hours.

The front door clicked open. Mitch shoot to his feet, McCaffery had his hand hovering over the gun, but his hand spasmed—pain, and the door flew open before he had time to grab anything.

Mitch dove for the gun, but managed only to knock it out of McCaffery’s hands as Victor marched into the room, eyes finding Mitch’s instantly. Sydney hung just outside, and Helen peered through the door looking from the gun, to McCaffery and back. McCaffery froze, the gun still on the floor.

Victor did not spare a look at McCaffery instead heading straight for Mitch, tangling his fingers in Mitch’s hair and kissing him. Of the things Mitch had expected—a gunshot, McCaffery shouting, Victor shouting McCaffery inexplicably dropping to the ground in pain—this was not it.

His mind froze trying to make sense of it.

Victor’s mouth was soft, and the kiss was delicate and open mouthed. It certainly didn’t feel fake. Victor’s hands were warm where they cupped the back of Mitch’s neck, and the pads of his fingers were pressed firmly into his skin. Victor breathed slowly through his nose and Mitch should have really been thinking about McCaffery.

This definitely wasn’t the time for a real kiss, not when Victor was clearly stalling and taking stock of the situation. Not when there was no declaration ahead of time. But—slowly Mitch leaned in anyway and Victor leaned back in. There was shuffling behind them, and the sound of Helen’s voice but Victor was still kissing him. Probably Victor was trying to tell him something, but Mitch was not getting it. The only thing he was getting was the taste of Victor’s mouth which was—good. It was good.

“Wait, _Helen._ ” This was McCaffery. Carefully, Victor pulled away, bringing his hands to the edges of Mitch’s jaw.

“Are you okay?”

“I have a lot of questions,” Mitch said, because he did.

“ _Helen_?” McCaffery said again.

“Hi to you too George, always knew you were a piece of shit.”

McCaffery—George, dove for the gun on the ground, waving it between them and Helen. He was looking from Victor to Mitch, to their wedding rings, to the Victor’s gentle hand on Mitch’s neck.

“What the fuck is this?”

This was the point where George should have dropped like a stone in pain, but he stood standing and Victor leaned his head against Mitch’s shoulder.

“I have a plan,” Victor said, his breath soft and hot against Mitch’s ear. Mitch tried to remember he was a grown man and not a teenager. He coughed.

“Me too.”

“Where’s Sr?” Victor asked.

 Mitch smiled. “Upstairs. The girls are okay.”

Victor nodded, but George and Helen were still arguing.

“Who the hell—what!”

“I can’t believe you kidnapped Mitch! I mean, these are like, your wife’s only friends now. Sorry ex-wife’s. You’re so obsessed George.” Helen sighed and strolled further into the room, unbothered by the gun. Her eyes, flickering briefly to Victor and Mitch.

“My ex—wait, you know Susan?” George turned to them.

“She’s a lovely woman,” Mitch said. “Jack’s a good kid too, she and my daughter, are good friends.”

George was gaping open mouthed and Chad took this moment to come down the stairs.

“Oh, hello,” he said. George’s brow twitched.

“You kidnapped your wife’s friends…” Helen sighed. “Such a man thing to do. A crazy ex thing. But scary. I should warn Tiffany about men like you.” Chad stumbled.

“They’ll tie it to you, McCaffery. Susan will be the first person to notice we’re missing. Whatever happens to us, they’ll get you,” Mitch said.

“In a heart beat,” Victor finished, pulling away from Mitch finally. “You’re on the board of a company sponsoring the drug trials that I was a volunteer for and also a good friend of your wife’s. This aren’t looking good for you. And Chad Jr will—”

“If I go down, I’ll bring them with me.” George was flustered, his gun raised, pointing it at Mitch and Victor and then finally coming to rest at Sydney.

Victor didn’t break form. “I’ll talk down to George, you get Chad.” Victor took a step forward, walking around the edge to try and put himself between the gun and Sydney. Helen, now in the center of the room, backed up from George.

Victor turned to look a Mitch, mouthing, _Chad._  

“George, let’s talk about this before you have bodies piling up around you.”

The gun did not waver.

#

Mitch focused on Chad. Sr.

“You don’t want to do this Chad,” Helen said, surprisingly. She was looking between Chad and Sydney as Victor was still talking at George.

“She’s just a kid Chad,” Mitch said. “You didn’t want to hurt anyone, and you know she’s going to get hurt.”

“They always get hurt,” Chad mumbled, but Mitch approached, cautiously.

 “You don’t agree with Eli Ever, do you? But you’re worried people will think that? And yet, you still stabbed that boy…”

Chad shook his head. “I didn’t mean to. It’s the curse. It’s the curse. They always get hurt.”

“Chad,” Helen said, her tone serious for the first time. “Chad, George is going to shoot that little girl.”

Chad shook his head. Victor was still talking to George, stalling, but not dropping him. The question was why? Why hadn’t Victor come in and knocked everyone unconscious? Because he didn’t want to tip off Helen? Because he needed to figure out what George knew?

“What curse Chad?” Mitch asked, trying for slow, steady.

“Both of you shut up!” George whirled around, gun pointed back at Mitch. “Step back, step away! Stop trying to turn him against me. They’re lying to you Chad! They’re lying.” And then Chad shifted. Uncomfortable, and Mitch knew Victor was working.

“What curse Chad? What do you mean you didn’t mean to hurt anyone? Everyone already is always getting hurt, why?”

“I don’t want to die,” Chad said. At the same time George shouted, “Shut up!”

“It’s—they’re always created around me. Ever since Jr was born and the fire, and I lived, I got out and I lived and I only didn’t want to be alone. I only wanted there to be more like me—and then everyone was dying…only they didn’t stay dead.”

“You’re an EO,” Mitch said. “You’ve just been looking for others like you?”

“No! I wanted a way to undo it! I wanted a way to stop! I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“You stabbed that boy!” George shouted. “You’re the violent one, not me, I didn’t know he was doing this, none of you can prove that! I won’t go to jail.”

But Mitch had not finished with his plan.

“You think Eli Ever could stop it. You think if he killed you, it would stop.”

“Yes,” Chad murmured. For his ranting and raving and terrifying of Terrence, Chad really wanted to believe he would do the right thing. Maybe stabbing Terrence had been an accident, but the shouting? The scaring him? The bringing a knife? That was Chad, and it was Chad’s fault. Chad Sr. wanted so badly to be someone who wanted to do the right thing, but he was absolutely unwilling to do it. That’s why he wanted someone else to. That’s why he thought of Eli Ever and hoped to blame it on him instead of taking responsibility for his actions.

“Well that’s fine,” George said. “But Eli Ever is gone, no one knows about him! It’s a pipe dream Chad, he’s not real!”

“But I know him,” Victor said. He was holding his phone out, speaking directly into the microphone. “His real name is Eli Cardale and I know he’s in prison. And with your son’s connections, you could go there. Confess to stabbing Terrence. Plead guilty. Find Eli.” And that’s why Victor was stalling, he was trying to get a confession, for Terrence.

“That’s a lie!” George said, gunning whipping around, but then Helen’s husband’s voice sounded from the phone, grainy but clear.

“No, Victor is telling the truth,” his voice was blaring from a speaker phone. There was moment of silence, a moment of implicit _why should I believe you_ “Look, Chad, I’m an EO okay. I’m a…a living lie detector.”

“Okay Bryan—shut the fuck up, you’re _also_ lying.” George stamped his foot.

But Mitch could see that Bryan wasn’t lying and he could see that Victor’s eyes were calculating, he was using his powers on George now, making him shift, making him sweat.

“You can tell if someone’s an EO, right Chad? That how you know if they’re like you?” Mitch asked Chad. Chad shrugged, but it was clear he believed Bryan—believed Victor.

“This is ridiculous!” George shouted again. “I have done nothing wrong, I’m not going to—”

“I’ll say you were my accomplice, I’ll take a deal for naming you. I have the proof. If I’m in jail with Eli Ever—he can end this.” Chad Sr. raised his gun and pointed it at George, George pointed it back at him.

Victor was whispering something to Helen, and somehow Helen went off upstairs, eyes looking between Chad and some unknown space upstairs.

Sydney was still standing by the door. She was the back-up if things got ugly but Victor was not going to endanger her.

“Put the gun down George,” Victor said. “It’s over.”

George didn’t.

George and Chad were at a stand still, until Helen disappeared from sight upstairs. The George dropped the gun, screaming in pain before collapsing to the ground.

Chad looked stunned. Mitch turned to Victor.

“You have a car,” Mitch said.

“Helen’s SUV.”

“I’ll help her load the girls on.”

Victor nodded then turned to Sydney, “Check the basement, I can tell someone’s down there.” It was probably someone from the family McCaffery had killed. The family that used to live in this house.

Chad looked stunned. But then Victor looked him up and down.

“You take the fall for all of this. _All_ of it. And call the police once we clear off, yeah? And I’ll make sure Eli gets you and no one else has to die.”

Mitch knew he should head upstairs to help Helen. He should probably better restrain McCaffery. He should ask Victor what was with that kiss.

But a knew moments after Sydney ran off to the basement, her voice cam barrelling back.

“The girl’s bleeding out!” Sydney said. “I don’t know if she’ll make it.” And Mitch watched the realization in Chad’s eyes.

“He shot her,” Chad said quietly, his gun still in his hands.

And in that moment, Mitch knew George was not going to make it out of this house alive.


	9. Generic Happy Ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pretty much what was it says on the tin

The hospital chair wasn’t really big enough for Mitch. But there was no were else to sit, and hovering would do him no good now.

 Cindy and Hanan were going to be fine. Especially since Mitch had altered their records to give them better insurance. And the little girl, Ella Armenteros, was in the ICU, bleeding heavily but still alive.

George was here too—in the morgue. Chad had waited to shoot him until Sydney had taken Ella out of the house, but once he started, he was thorough. Eight shots in the chest, three in the back. Mitch could still here the sound ringing in his ears.

The important part was that everything had been taken care off.

“We have to get out of here,” Sydney muttered from beside him. Mitch muttered in agreement, trying not to shift and warp the chair. The only problem with leaving now, was that it would cause suspicion. They were, after all, vital witnesses in a kidnapping and shooting.

Even now, as Sydney and Mitch pretended to look distraught, Helen and Bryan were giving their statements and Victor kept telling the cops he wanted a lawyer.

But there shouldn’t be a problem really. The police already had statements from some of them, did they _need_ Mitch’s statement? Their fake identities were solid too, no one needed to pry into them, and as long as no one took down their names, there was no real reason to stick around. No reason except—

“We have to wait for Ella.”

Sydney paused, she pulled her sleeves over her hands and tucked her hands into her armpits. “Ella’s parents abandoned her.”

“I know.”

“They were—”

“I know.” Ella’s parents were the basement. Not only that, but they were, less than all there. Something not even Sydney had attempted to revive. Not that, apparently, Syd should have tried at all. The Armenteros, according to Mitch’s eavesdropping on the police’s recounting of events to Helen, were not good people. The number and variety of crimes committed in that house made Victor look like an innocent, and Victor had murdered at least one man in cold blood.

“If Chad’s right…” Mitch trailed off. “We need to talk to Ella, to see if she’s like Cindy and Terrence. Then we can leave”

But the thought of leaving, of somehow returning to their fake life in the suburbs felt odd now. Especially given Victor’s entrance, and the kiss—but now wasn’t the time to think about that. Mitch should have been worried about calling someone to come get them. Victor had apparently texted Dominic, Dominic who was supposed to have his own fake identity outside of them.

Mitch ran a hand through his hair.

“Are we going to take Ella with us?” Sydney asked.

“I don’t know.”

Sydney wrapped her arms around herself. “Do we have to move again? Are we—is one of us going to stay with Dominic?”

“We’re not going to leave you Syd,” Mitch said. He smiled, putting an arm around her and pulling her close. “Let’s just take this one step at a time.” Sydney muttered in agreement, and they both turned to watch Victor talking to the hospital staff. “You know,” Mitch said, “I know we’ve only been all together for a year, but we’re not going to abandon you. We’re family now.”

Sydney sniffed. “Well, hopefully we can abandon Helen.”

“We can only hope.”

 

#

 

Victor threw his bag on the couch. Sydney pushed a jumping Dol off her, with promises to eventually take him for a walk. Dominic, who had driven for hours to research them and then driven them back in the middle of the night, walked directly upstairs to pass out on the guest bedroom.

Mitch watched it all happen from, the sidelines. They were back. But the illusion of normalcy that had hung over their lives like a pane of glass had been shattered

 “We should stop by Susan’s, and eventually give our condolences,” Victor sighed.

“Are we going to say we were there, or did we hear this all from Helen?” Mitch asked, yawning. Sydney went to get Dol’s collar. Victor paused, rubbing a hand over his face, solemn and slow, discordant with the hustle of Dol and Sydney behind him. Sweat had wrinkled Victor’s shirt near the creases in his elbows and shirt collar, and sly away strands of hair were plastered to his forehead. In his moment he didn’t look like a man who could have gone to jail for a Ponzee scheme or drug use. He looked clean and tired and soft, his edges dulled down for once in his life.

Sydney was out the door in an instant, despite the late hour, and Victor flopped onto the couch, his neck propped onto the back of the sofa.

Mitch sat down beside him.

He wasn’t exactly sure how to ask about the kiss. This was not a romantic comedy where they each knew the right thing to say, where they were thinking the same thing and would just arrive at the right conclusion effortlessly. Nor was this an awkward teen movie were stumbling and fumbling would be endearing.

Carefully, Mitch picked up Victor’s left hand, where the wedding ring gleamed in the light. Slowly, he brought the ring to his lips, watching as Victor turned to look at him through half-lidded eyes.

“That was certainly something for a fake kiss,” Mitch said. Victor hummed, low and unbothered, and something in that ease unbuckled Mitch’s chest.

“I may have gotten carried away.” Victor paused, his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and Mitch rested his head beside Victor’s on the couch. “It was supposed to be stalling,” Victor said, “while I catalogued who was in the house and where they were. It was supposed to be so George would realize why I was here and wouldn’t immediately shoot me after he got over the shock of Helen.” Victor’s hand closed around Mitch’s, his skin warm to the touch. “I may have, taken it too far.”

“I didn’t mind.” Mitch leaned over, his lips brushing Victor’s. They were doing this in the wrong order. Adopt a kid, get married, start dating. If that was the direction this was going after all. “But you could have been clearer.”

“I’ll be clear now,” Victor said, smiling, and Mitch wanted to laugh. “Mitch Turner, I may be in love with you.”

And then Victor kissed him again.

 

#

 

_Eight Months Later_

Victor sat on the bed beside Mitch, showing him a clipping of a row house on the edge of a city in New York.

“It’s close enough we might be able to escape to Canada, if we really wanted to.” Victor was joking. “It’ll be easier to stay anonymous and now that we have two kids, I think our cover will be okay.”

“There are a lot of police in New York.”

“Well my back up was New Jersey.”

Mitch laughed.

“Besides, looking at the cops’ databases. I don’t think anyone is looking for us.”

“Your parents saw you.”

“Susan claimed they said they thought I looked like their son.”

Mitch hummed. Victor settled on the back board. A strand of blond hair was dangling in front of Victor’s face, but all Victor did was close his eyes and lean back.

“We can move from New York, but not to a suburb, not again. For once, even if we have to lie, it would be nice to be real.”

Mitch wanted to ask, a real what? A real family?

“We could get married,” Victor said, cracking one eye open. And then very carefully, Mitch leaned over and kissed the corner of Victor’s mouth. “Only if you want to,” Victor clarified. “For realism’s sake.”

“I do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the END. Thank you for everyone who has commented on this fic! Please continue to do so! What was your favourite part? What did you think could be better? Let me know!
> 
> The sequel comes out in September and will obliterate the events here with canon, but c'est la vie!
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed it and continue to do so, despite it's flaws! Also, tell me, if you want, your favourite EO in this fic!

**Author's Note:**

> Heeeeey, if you're wondering why there are so many EO OCs it's for plot reasons. Everything is for a plot reason, and people just don't understand it fully yet. Also thanks to Kris (kris-the-kraken.tumblr.com) for beta reading this


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